BUSINESS IS ALL ABOUT TRADE - TRADE YOUR TIME

Your time is a valuable resource!

Time is a valuable resource, and as my mentor once said, "time is more valuable than money because time is life". There is nothing that a man can exchange for life. Majority of people are employed to do tasks that their employers are not necessarily unable to do, but really do not have the time to do. Let's take for instance a small supply business.

If Mr X owns a supply business and starting out he handled all aspects of the business, with new growth he is very likely to hire Miss Y to keep the books and take stock of the shipments. This is not because he doesn't have the competency, but with expansion, he does not have all the time to handle that task. Miss Y may be competent at it, which will focus on her abilities or talent, but his first reason is to free up some of his time to do the other things he deems as important. The salary he pays to Miss Y is first for her time and for her competency.

Several people do not understand this importance of placing a value on time. I once heard a wise man say that the best way to place a value on time is to determine how much your present employ yields for you on the hour and begin to analyse each other activity you carry out against that cost. If the activity that will take that time, will cost less than the amount you make, it is foolishness to engage in that activity save for other constraints.

A typical example is doing laundry. Say for instance you earn #300/hr and it will take you 6 hours to do the laundry and iron them, that will amount to #1800. If your laundry guy charges you #1000 for laundry. It would be foolishness to stay up for six hours doing a work that would cost you #1800 when you can pay #1000 and get that time period for something more productive. It was a major eye-opener for me. I realised I expended my time so much in a lot of irregular and unproductive activities.

I recently heard a friend of mine got a cook, what came to mind was the fact that he actually needed it because of the need for proper feeding instead of junks, but also he had freed up some profitable time to do some good work. Now he did not have to bother about what to eat or how to go about cooking it. His mind was more settled to carry on with his productive work. He understood the value of time and decided to trade his money to get time. The amount he would pay the cook was less than the amount he would have made with now free time spent thinking of what to eat in a month. It dawned on me the reason why cooks, maids and servants were assigned to people as they moved up their career ladder. It was to ensure that they spent the productive hours actually doing things that were productive. If you knew you would meet a hot nicely cooked meal at home on arrival, you are more likely to stay back and work hard.

Time is a resource of which everyone has a uniform amount. It is given daily as long as there is life. There is no rich or poor, no middle class. You have 24 hours each day to trade with to get either talent or money.

A local delivery system is built on this concept of saving time. The sender does not have the time to make the trip to deliver, so they pay to have someone else utilise their time doing it for them. This is one example of a time-based opportunity that doesn’t require any skill save proper handling of the goods to be delivered.  Another one is being a messenger, and new ideas around helping people shop, wash etc. are all tied to time. Most of the time the things we hire people to do are not necessarily things we cannot do ourselves, we just cannot combine our current activities with them.

Time is a resource of which everyone has a uniform amount. 

While some other opportunities may be tied to talents and skill, the availability of time is a great resource at acquiring those skills. You can spend your time interning or volunteering at places where those skills can be learnt. You can invest your time to acquire a skill and then with the time and talent, go on to acquire money which for so many is the goal. Usually, I take interns at my firm. Most of them are newbies without any knowledge of the workings of the trade or equipment we use. But with an investment of their time, they are able to acquire skills that they have leveraged on later in life.

There are people that do not have time, find out what they need to get done and how you can conveniently do it for them and get paid. I once met a young man who needed money to eat, I didn't just give him some money I asked him if he could do some gardening (I really do not have time for that sort of thing anymore), employed him at it and paid him afterwards. He left feeling more fulfilled about earning his wages. Funnily enough, we have been doing this for our parents under the unsigned contract "errands". Why not be a professional "errander".

Time is precious and valuable. It is said that with time, even water will pierce through rock. While this also has to do with persistence and work, there is a truism in the fact that time is a resource that you must put to good use. Put your time to work directly earning money or learning new skills and talents that will get you money. Don't waste this equal resource that has been given to every man.

Do you have time? What are you doing with it? Are you wasting time? What premium do you place on your time?