Is Your Time Well ‘Spent’?

How do you feel about the number 86,400 (if anything)?

It’s an important number however many of us complain that we don’t have enough of what the number is made up of. You have already used it, reading this far, we’re talking about time.

If time were money, would you waste and fritter away as much of it?

Think about it for a minute; consider the last week of your life, how much time was spent and for no return? If you have time the chances are you are making money with it, however money will never buy you some more time.

We all have 86,400 seconds in a day, no more, no less. It doesn’t matter who you are, what shape your finances are in, whether you think you are successful or not, whether you are in or out a relationship, whether you have a brilliant career or a job that pays the bills, that’s the totally figure of all the seconds we have in a day.

You have no more or less than anyone else.

Why do we not see time as the precious commodity that it is, unlike how we place such a value on money?

Every day when we wake up, put into our ‘time bank’ are precious moments that have not yet been used, however we cannot store it up for the future, or keep it for a rainy day.

As soon as we realise this, it can make a huge shift in our motivation to fill it in the way that we want to.

• Unlike money, time never has you in debt.
• Unlike money, no-one can mug you for it (well, unless we give it away emotionally) and no one can steal it from you.
• Unlike money, we can’t balance transfer it somewhere else and neither does it ask us to pay us back, once we have spent it, that’s it.
• Unlike money we don’t receive a statement telling us what balance we have left.
• Unlike money you cannot borrow it now and pay it back later.
• Unlike money you also cannot waste it, because time is not yours to waste, it only belongs to you when it comes!

Out of your allotted 84,000 seconds in a day, you decide how you spend it; sleeping, eating, making money, watching television, playing with children, having conversations you want and don’t want to have.

You may spend it on pursuits that make you happy, healthy and positive.

You may on the other hand spend it on activities that make you feel you are living in debt by pessimism, unhappiness, jealousy, and feelings of lack, hate and poverty.

If in anyway you can realise quickly that this is spent time, you may shift your attention. However we look at money as being the most common thing there is, it isn’t, your happiness depends on you refocusing your expenditure of time and if life is not working for you choosing another ‘bank’ to use your time.

How do you want to spend your time? How can you ‘shop’ and buy so that you are balancing effectively ‘this is the life of my choosing’?

First, accept and think about time as something that does not cost you a penny, it’s yours, it always has been.

Up until now if you have filled your time with ‘I will do that when I have more time’, realise that you will actually never have more time, we all have the same amount.

Embrace time, place a value upon it. Time is continually being spent, and once it’s gone, you cannot return it or ask for an exchange, just because you did not spend it wisely.

As you have time now, you have been given your biggest resource. In how you spend it that is up to you, but it’s a sure guarantee that how you spend this moment will determine the type of return you have on those times yet to come.

No one has more than you; we are all equals in time.

How you cash in on time is your choice, so are you spending yours wisely?

Updated: 31/12/2012