Would You Rather Spend Time or Money?

I often ask this question to my clients, and get mixed answers. For many people the concept of losing money is understandably scary. There’s a simple reason for this. They have a mindset of scarcity rather than one of abundance.

In this mindset, losing money becomes a fear, but you must remember, you can always make more money, but that simply isn’t true of time.  The reality is you can never get back time, once an hour, day, year has been wasted, you can never get it back.  Money can be leveraged, earned back, replaced and grown to a point that you may not ever remember the loss, but time is finite. In life, you only get so many minutes.

The fear of losing money is a major factor in keeping many business owners from moving forward, but when you understand that time is your only finite asset, you can put this fear into perspective.  A business owner is much more likely to take intelligent risks if they don’t have that fear. Questions like what if this idea doesn’t work, what if this is the wrong decision, what if, what if become much easier to answer when you know you can always make what you invested into that decision back.  Yes, we must evaluate our decisions; we must test and measure but we must also be decisive, take risks and move on and fear of losing money can keep us from being decisive.  

But, you may ask, isn’t time equal to money?  

It is, therefore you must spend it wisely.  Is your time being spent moving your business forward, or making you feel good since you checked off a bunch of “to do’s” that weren’t vital to your business’ success.  Is your time focused on profitable activities, business growth, business opportunity, or are you in reactive mode?  

Reactive mode usually wastes time, while proactive mode provides you the choice as to how and when you will spend your time and understanding what is more important, time or money, can help you ultimately make your choice on how you spend your time.  

Ask yourself the question for each task that you do:  Is this activity moving me closer to increased revenue or profitability?  If not, then either STOP IT, or delegate the task.
And remember, time is irreplaceable – treasure it, spend it wisely and make sure you get a return on your investment.