How You Value Time Determines The Return You Get

“I just don’t have enough time!!” Really? How many times have you said that this past year? I know I have…way too many times. I wonder what I would say…and how I would act….If I really (really) understood the true value of time.

Most people don’t grasp the fact that time is a positive magical resource with all upside and no downside. In fact, most people think just the opposite:  Not only do they say they don’t have enough, but often complain that the quality of what they do have is unsatisfactory.

Unfortunately, I still find myself with that thinking way too often. The reasons?

So what is the real value of time? A question like that could be answered a million ways depending on who you ask. However, sometimes you come across an answer so well stated, so obvious in retrospect and so true that it stops you in your tracks. That is exactly what happened to me when I read the following comments by  Arnold Bennett on the value of time:

“Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply0293TimeValue II
of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning and lo! Your purse is magically filled with 24hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It it yours. It is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive.  In the realm of time there is not aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect.  Genius is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day, and there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely previous commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt!

You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you. I have said the affair was a genuine miracle. Is it not? You have to live on this 24hrs of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the growth of your immortal soul.

It’s right use, it’s most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness, the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends, depends on that. If one cannot arrange that an income of 24hrs shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one’s whole life indefinitely. We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.” ~Arnold Bennett

Well said, and as the saying goes, “’Nuff said.”

I love the comparison of time to capital and investment; it’s only fitting for something of such high value.  If more people valued time this way, perhaps fewer would complain about it. In fact, can you imagine the return and benefit you and I would experience if we valued time this way and acted accordingly? The beauty and other benefit is that those associated with us would be come much richer as well.

So what needs to change in order for you to get maximum return from your time?  Is the way you value of time currently serving or sabotaging you? Those are good questions to ask yourself and ones I know I’ll be  working on answering it throughout 2016.

If you have time, please leave a comment :).

Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.

2 thoughts on “How You Value Time Determines The Return You Get

  1. Great post, Rob. My dad used to always say this to me about time, “The good lord gave all the same amount of only one thing–time. And what distinguishes us from one another is how we use it”.

    I actually don’t know if that was his own quote or if he was quoting someone else. But this post reminded me of that.

    • Thanks for the story Ben. As is the case here, “Dad was right.” Funny, the older I get the more I realize “Dad was right.” I hope that is the case for my own kids.

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