The Currency Of Time

Have you ever thought of time as currency? In many ways that is exactly what it is, especially if you are paid by how much time you spend working. If you are trading your time for money then in a very real sense time is currency.  The reality is that you are actually purchasing dollars with your time. The problem with this arrangement is that you only have just so much time, obviously when you run out of time your opportunity to purchase more money then vanishes as well.

Following this logic, is wealth measured in time then or measured in dollars... I would suggest neither is an appropriate measurement of wealth. Wealth can be best measured by the value your time creates for you or someone else. For example:   If I am hired to give a speech for $1100, and I invest 10 hours researching and writing my speech, and one hour actually delivering my speech, you could say I just earned $100 per hour. However the wealth does not stop there, assuming the content of my speech added value to those listening, the potential wealth continues on with each person in attendance. To take this one step further, if I take that same speech and put it on a CD and offer it for sale, the potential income for me and the potential added value for anyone who purchased the CD for all practical purposes is infinite.

At the beginning of each year, at the beginning of each month, at the beginning of each week, and at the beginning of each day, we all start with the same amount of time. Each of us has a choice whether to spend our time purchasing dollars, or invest our time creating value for ourselves and others.

By investing our time in Personal Development and People Development we can change our world and be more Intentional About Our Legacy.

~Randell Mark Olson