What Will Happen If You Start Treating Time Like Money?
What’s worth more — time or money? My first experiment of 2021
Hi
This is Shreya from the Silver Lining Sunday newsletter.
Productivity is a hot topic these days. Everyone is talking about it and telling others how to save time. Some of those tricks may work out for a week or two, but they’ll not likely stay with you if you don’t really get into the root of it.
Your life is nothing but time. Your time is life. Once you understand it, you won’t need any productivity lessons.
The Experiment
I wanted to try something different and experiment with how I’d treat my time differently if it was money. To take action about time value realization, I decided to run an experiment for a few weeks — I planned to invest my time as if it was money.
Here’s what I learned from my experimentation. It was overwhelming in the beginning but was a fun activity to learn about myself and my habits.
1. I became mindful about my screen time
What if I tell you that every minute of your day is worth $1000?
Would you still scroll a million miles on Instagram or Twitter — like you do every day?
Wouldn’t you’d be more mindful about how much time you spend on social media, in fact, on your screen. According to research from RescueTime, people generally spend an average of 3 hours 15 minutes on their phones, with the top 20% using over 4 hours and 30 minutes. Most people check their phone around 58 times, and now we can debate how much of those 58 times is work-related (a sneak peeks at our inbox or the number of likes on the newly posted photo?)
After I started my experiment, I learned that I don’t really have to check my phone as often as I do. It also made me mindful of the content I was consuming and made me keep track of how much time I was using on my phone for work and entertainment.
If a person knows that he can make $24000 in a single day, I am sure he wouldn’t waste 3 hours watching random peoples’ Instagram stories. Even when you can’t make that much money, working on new skills and establishing a business today will eventually take you there down the line.
This mindfulness made me take the following steps
Turning off my notifications.
Leaving and muting groups I wasn’t interested in.
I allotted 30 minutes to spend on Instagram and WhatsApp for leisure and connecting with friends. And later ended up quitting IG and Twitter.
Limited checking my emails to 2 times a day and my Medium stats only once.
2. I learned to say NO without feeling guilty
As an empath, I would try to help as many people as possible; I would always support a friend or get on a Zoom call even when I didn’t want to.
I had trouble saying no. Every time I did, I would end up feeling like I was committing a heinous crime.
Ever since I started this experiment and pretended like my time was worth more than it actually was, I stopped feeling guilty for saying no. I learned that every person is trying to improve in life and business, but if I keep entertaining their requests, I will lose the time and energy to focus on my own progress.
Now I have become comfortable saying no to almost everything. For example, I’d say no to a random podcast interview request, and I’d say no if I weren’t ready to meet a friend or a colleague.
We get muddled up at times because our desires are different from our friends or family. Mostly in such scenarios, we end up choosing things against our will.
We end up saying yes to things that bring us no value.
We do that to be the bigger person, a good friend, or a better mentor. And we forget that by doing all of this, we’re taking away the chance to work on opportunities that could change our lives or a chance to meet our spouse or that investor.
When you say no to others, you’re saying yes to yourself.
3. I stopped replying to messages with no agenda
I thought I was obliged to respond to everyone sending me a message or calling me or tagging me. I had a notion that people who reached out to me were entitled to my time. It was my moral obligation to pick up every call, and if I missed some calls to call back and spend 5–10 minutes in a rhetoric conversation before finally getting to the point.
Sounds like a lot of work? But isn’t it what we’ve been doing all this time? Answering emails, messages, and calls with no intention and agenda.
It’s always easier to answer — “Hey, wanted to know how do you monetize your podcast?” compared to “Hi! How are you?” and “Can I ask you something?”
Asking to ask one question when you already have asked the question shouldn’t be entertained. This may not apply to our close friends but acquaintances and online buddies asking for help on LinkedIn or other social media platforms; it saves a lot of time.
This experiment made me appreciate people who reached out to me with a pitch. I also become mindful about how I was approaching my friends and peers if I needed their help.
When we reach out to someone with an agenda, we respect their time and our own. This line I read somewhere resonates perfectly with this new approach.
“If you don’t have something to do, please don’t do it here.”
If you need some guidance and help from a friend or a mentor, get straight to the point instead of beating around the bush.
4. My time was accountable
Ever since I started running this crazy experiment, I became mindful of my life and spending most of my time.
Every hour was accountable for, if not every minute. This doesn't mean that I wasn’t enjoying my life. I enjoyed it more due to the boundaries I created for my work and leisure. Now, when I was watching one episode of Seinfeld after dinner, I no longer hear a voice telling me — “you should be working.”
This new arrangement allowed me to create a system for my creative endeavor; I divided my day into three big chunks.
Pre-work- setting agenda for the day
Work- full-time availability on Slack and nowhere else
Post work- writing, reading, and family time
Since my time was accountable, I stopped watching random videos on Youtube and going down a rabbit hole on Twitter. I became aware of where I was spending my time like never before.
This accountability led me to follow a system to work on my creative endeavors seamlessly.
“It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”
— Steve Jobs
5. I started respecting myself
I never expected this experiment would make me feel any bit different about myself. But when you start treating your time like it was money, that indirectly means you’re an important person and your time is worth something.
When I begin to respect my time, it automatically helped me grow my self-respect. When this mindset shift happened, I said “no” more, not only because my time was money but also because I respected myself. I was only interested in engaging in work that resonated with me and my vision.
Self-respect allows you to set healthy boundaries for yourself.
It means you believe in yourself and your virtues and are not afraid to be selective about where you spend your time; when you learn that your time here is limited, your mindset and lifestyle change ultimately.
“Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.”
— Clint Eastwood
This experiment may have started as a fun project. But with time, I understood that it was bigger than that. It was a complete paradigm shift that would change the way I lived my life.
I can earn back the money if I lose it all, but there’s no way I can get back my time. I learned that time was my biggest asset. I may not be a millionaire, but my time is still worth a lot more.
Do you respect your time?
Share this with a friend you care about.
Last Week’s Finds
Lesson of the week
You have all the answers you need. Listen to yourself carefully
Book of the week
I am reading Reasons To Be Alive by Matt Haig; it’s dark yet funny. I am reading some mental health-related books for an article I am working on. I will share it with you next Sunday.
Video of the week
Actor and polymath Rajiv Surendra’s NYC Apartment tour was the most amazing house tour video I have seen. And it’s not because of his luxurious and huge but because every piece in his house has a story. It’s like a museum in itself. It’s crazy how we don’t pay attention to these little details.
Quote of the week
“Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.” — Marcus Aurelius
Song of the week
This Sweet Child O' Mine cover by Taken By Trees is a beautiful indie-folk version of a hard rock song.
Creation of the week
Do you like compounding in finance? There’s compounding in creative endeavors? Read about it here.
Remember we talked about the importance of personal experiments in lifestyle design last week? While researching more, I learned that this concept is also known as the philosophy of Empiricism.
I hope you learned something new and helpful in today’s email. I will see you next Sunday with something new and experimental :)
Have a fun and exciting week ahead.
Love and light
Shreya