What’s your time worth to you?

Time management is one aspect of your personal and business life that cannot be under-estimated. It is critical that everyone strives to become better with the use of their time as it affects both personal and business ventures.

You can never really win with complete time management but you certainly can strive to become a master of it. If you can create an extra 2 hours of time each day, what would that mean to you? What would you do with that extra time? What is it worth to you?

Let me break it down for you with plain and simple numbers as discussed by Brian Tracy (self-development author):

2 hours extra time per day
is 10 extra hours per week (5 business days)
Which is 500 hours per year (50 weeks)
Thats 12 x 40 hour weeks per year
Which translates to 3 months extra time per year

Does this look more enticing to you now? Can you see the power of better time management? More importantly, can you see the value in this?

You see there is never going to be enough time to do everything you want. There are two concepts at the root of this model – “firstly you cant’ do everything you want at the same time, and secondly, without prioritising what you do want to do in order of priority and importance, then you are doomed to fall into the trap of savaging whatever time you have available to you, to which soon enough, you will realise “that there really is not a hell of a lot of time left to do what you want to do”.

So the statement goes like this “ there is never going to be enough time for everything you want. But there will always be enough time for you to do the most important things you want” – Brian Tracy.

And next to this, it is wise to understand that there is a difference between what’s important and whats urgent. While things can often be urgent, they aren’t in fact, always greatly important. So it is wise to prioritise what’s most important.

The best question you should always be asking yourself (or your staff) is “What’s the best use of my (your) time right now?”. This is directed at the value you can bring in the time you have now especially when serving clients.

You see, you can always work harder and put more time and effort in the same full-time working week we all have. But this model is somewhat flawed. Because it means if you want to earn more, you have to work more.

For example, if you’re in the service based industry and you see 40 clients per week (at 1 hour per client), then that naturally equates to 40 hours of work a week. And let’s just say you charge $30 per client totalling to $1200 per week (total revenue). Without taking out any expenses, that may be an average to above average wage for some (or most).

Now, if you want to double your income, then that means you have to see 80 clients per week which then means you have to open up an extra 40 hours the same week to cater for this influx of potentially serving 40 new clients. Do you see what’s going on here? You can never win at this game working with this model. So you have so find a way to leverage your time by providing and increasing more value for money AND not time for money!

Even if you do work on an hourly rate and you can’t avoid it at the moment, then at least find ways to increase your value contribution so that you can have greater impact on the results you bring into your work (or for the client) within the same hour.

Using this same somewhat flawed model “then you have to ask yourself this question “ why would some one get paid $20, $25, or even $50 an hour, while some others (the minority) get paid $1000 for the same hour doing the same sort of thing?

Well, you can argue that there is a difference in service, for example a retail employee vs. a doctor. Yes, this is true. But focus more on the contribution of value you can bring to someone (or to your workplace) in the same hour. So the question is not how much should I charge an hour – but rather, ‘how much value can I bring in that hour?’ And what would that value contribution be worth to my clients (or to my workplace) if it means my value can double, triple or quadruple the client’s/company’s performance, productivity and ultimately revenue?

Once you take away your focus from time in exchange for money and move toward value in exchange for money, this is what will happen:

1. You leverage how much time you can save
2. You give more results in the same hour
3. You get to serve qualified and ideal clients wanting to do business with you
4. You get to help more people doing what you love
5. You get a pay rise much quicker than anyone else because you are more valuable at your job
6. You become more valuable at your job or work, meaning you are less easily replaceable
7. You get paid very handsomely for the hour because you contribute more in the hour and therefore greater results for your clients.

This is what time management is all about!

It’s not simply about saving time. We all share 24 hours, 1440 minutes and 86,400 seconds each day. The question therefore you should ask yourself is “ Whats the best use of my time right now?

Now when you become more and more valuable in what you do, people will soon enough line up to zap you and take your time, also known as time vampires. In this case, the next question you need to ask yourself is “How much of my time am I willing to give away” now knowing how much my time is actually worth?

To your success,
Dr. Sohial Farzam
Doctor of TCM

References: Brain Tracy on Time Management. You can watch an oldie but a goodie clip of Brian Tracy on time management here: