Does that seem like a terrible question?

Maybe a better one might be if you had to put a monetary value on it, how much do you value your time.

To make it simple let’s imagine you get paid 1000 a week. If you work 5 days a week that equates to 200 a day and on an 8 hour day that equates to 25 an hour. (This is approximately double the average wage in the US and in the UK).

So the question is if you had to pay someone else to do what you were doing would it be worth $25 an hour to you. Feel free to modify the figures. So if you work for yourself and procrastinate, like I do from time to time, you might find yourself horrified at the waste of money.

So I like this as a metric to think about.

Another good question to ask yourself is if I was paying someone else to do this, how much would I pay them.

When I asked myself the same question and replied with total honesty the answer is that I would only pay myself for a couple of hours a day, the rest was wasted time.

It’s a pretty brutal realisation. Or at least it was for me. Even if you don’t work for yourself you should still ask the same question.

The fact is that we all, at least on current knowledge, only have a finite amount of time to live. As a result of which we should use our time valuably.

I have written about this before, probably because I like it so much. And it is a story that some say came from a James Patterson book and others say was a commencement speech from a former head of coca cola, Bryan Dyson. Chances are they both used it.

In it the story is told of how we all have five balls in life. These are family, friends, integrity, health and work. If we juggle them all and drop the work ball, it is made of rubber and will bounce back. The rest are made of glass and will shatter. So we need to make our time count and spend it where it matters.

There is no surprise that Elon Musk is one of the most successful people in the world. He works 80 hours a week and whereas many of us might say we work 80 hours a week, the chances are a lot of that is wasted time. Or spent doing stuff that has little or no value. The most succesful people in the world make their time count. Make sure you do too!

As an aside it is potentially worth noting that Elon Musk has been divorced three times now I believe. Once from his first wife and twice from his second. So maybe he should look at the balls. Then again maybe if he did the chances of solar power saving the world or us being able to move to Mars might be even more remote!

I hope you found this a valuable question to ask yourself. I am not sure whether I had really thought of it like this before. But at the end of the day we are all our own bosses. Masters of our fate, Captains of our souls.

Let’s not forget it and make our time count.

Time spent writing: 30 minutes.
Time From Starting Writing to Finishing: 8 hours, but it’s a Saturday so I wrote it and then got on with some other things before coming back to edit. Sometimes I think that might be a better approach, but I like the idea of finishing earlier. Conceivably what I might do is do a quick edit and then go back and improve posts on a Sunday, let’s see how my times work!
Time Editing: 20 minutes
How Happy I am with Result: 6