One of the biggest lies ever told to me was “time is money.” Time is not money. Time is priceless.
Time is the indicator by which we gauge our age, our maturity, our successes, our failures, our opportunities. “How much time did you spend with Company ABC?” “How long have you and he been together?”
Time can potentially make money. But it can also make babies, or stress, or grey hair. Time can put rust on vehicles and wrinkles in brows. Time can put degrees in hands and tans on backsides. Time is far more valuable than money. It can produce much more than money can.
Time can save lives or end them.
Time, you can never. Ever. Get back.
How do you put a price on that? At what point did currency become adequate compensation for something so powerful and irreplaceable?
There isn’t a thought, a process, a creation, a person, a moment that doesn’t include time.
Consider this:
We give moments of our lives away for money we blow on alcohol or vacations or things at the mall or the ever present “bill.” Most of us spend time making money to afford time away from making money. It’s an insane cycle.
Yet we justify it: “Time is money.”
We lie to ourselves about it: “I’ve got plenty of time.”
We plead with it: “I wish we had more time.”
Still, we invest our valuable hours for invaluable compensations and what makes it even worse, is that most of us don’t even like our jobs.
We are seduced endlessly by the idea of giving our time for some form of monetary compensation (health benefits, 401k match, bonuses, etc), to the point that we have developed systems to support us giving time for money. We have resumes and monster and recruiters and standards for interviewing. We consult experts and friends for their experience with a company or interview tips or resume writing. We constantly modify in search of the perfect string on the job search sites. We are trained to seek out a company that will pay us a wage we are financially comfortable with if we give them the one thing in life that we can not replenish, purchase or negotiate back: Time.
At some point, will we ever realize life really isn’t about the money?
There is no denying the role lucre plays in our survival, but isn’t life mostly about what we do with our time? Isn’t life about feeling good and being happy with the contribution you make with your time? Is money enough to do that?
A poll of twenty thousand professionals, by author, Richard Florida found that these are the motivators for people to do their best at work:
- Challenge and Responsibility
- Flexibility
- A stable work environment
- Money
- Professional Development
- Peer recognition
- Stimulating colleagues and bosses
- Exciting job content
- Organizational culture
- Location and community
Of those ten things, only one, (money) is an external motivator. All the others are about feeling valued and or being stimulated internally by ones work environment. (1)
Does the place you give most of your time to provide these things? Does it give you room to create them? Or is it all about the money?
I am not saying anyone should quit their jobs. I am only saying that if you do your job solely for the money, there is a whole lot of life that you are missing. A whole lot of life that I am missing, for that matter. There is a lot of time I am giving a way at a rate much less than what it is worth. There is a part of us that knows something is wrong or missing and maybe we don’t say anything because the media and all its’ imagery teaches us that money is the golden pass, the thing to chase, the way to get there.
I think we need to be choosier about how we spend our time. I think we need to demand workplaces and leaders that embrace our human contributions and pay us fairly as well. I think when we are job searching, how a company treats us, should be considered just as heavily as the compensation package. I think to achieve this, we need to start by being honest with ourselves about the value of our time and seek to invest it in ways that bring us some sort of satisfaction on a human level.
I think this is a hard change.
But not an impossible one.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Mmmhmm…This is exactly what Hedonism teaches…the way we spend our time, the people we spend it with, and the things we create within it, are all far more important than engaging in the work and trade barter system of society. Come on Amber, let’s go play somewhere…
@kenjos,
Oh Kent.
One day soon brother…
It’s tough to let go of this system of belief, tho, when there are two small mouths to feed. I’m all about trying to make my own hours so I can be home but damn if “The Man” ain’t holding me back!
Ok, that was a joke, but seriously- it is SOOOOO hard out here for a freelancer. No one really values what we do just because we aren’t chained to a desk.
I’m trying my darndest, tho. Eventually something’s gotta give.
@The Jaded NYer,
I agree love. It’s tough without children. But the thing is, no one values things that are in abundance. Employees happen to be in abundance now – highly skilled ones at that with this economy. I say fight it out as long as you can love. Something somehow has to give…
Plus – not that you want it, but State Healthcare for kids is usually THAT DEAL – if it came to that.
This thing all things devours,
birds, beasts, trees and flowers,
gnaws iron, bites steel,
and turns hard stone into meal,
Slays kings, ruins towns,
and brings high mountains down.
That riddle is not hard to figure out in context of this post. Time is the only true comodity you have. Eat Dorritos,make more. You can spend money and make more. Spend time, it is gone forever. You can only do two things with time: invest it or waste it. Choose wisely.
This true fact is ingrained into my soul. I guess coming from a factory worker’s home will do that. Watching someone lose 30 years of thier life and energy. Encouraging thier kids to enter into “safe careers” rather than follow thier dreams. Can I keep a normal job? Yes, of course. Do I? Not so much. Life, so far, has been an adventure! Maybe when I have kids I’ll get sucked into the black hole of “responsibility” and bills. But my 20′s was time well spent!
I really enjoyed this post Amber. This is exactly why I left my 9-5 almost 5 years ago, I felt as if it was consuming too much of my time. I always said that what was worse than going to a job that I couldn’t stand was leaving that same job at 5pm, knowing that I had just wasted 8 hours of my life. My life now is less restricted and I actually make more money with less time spent. I guess when people use the phrase that “time is money”, they are equating them in the sense that both are of value and both can be spent. I actually use the phrase a lot because if I feel that something is a waste of time, my first thought is that my time could be spent on something more valuable. Time and money are similar in the sense that we are only giving a little of both, and the goal should be to spend both wisely. However, I do agree with your article 100% that time is definitely not the same as money. Time can’t be earned, time can’t be recouped, time is way more valuable.