At Planning for Life we encourage our client to develop
plans for spending their money. It is a way of maintaining control over their
money, but in a more positive way than “setting budgets”. Similarly, we also
encourage our clients to set plans for spending their time, plans that are often
more about what not to do than what to do. We start by looking at the concept
of getting something for free by doing or making it ourselves. So what does “Free”
really mean? One of the answers will be “at no cost”, implying that whatever is free costs no money. However, free can often cost us in time, in which case it’s not really “free”.
Sure, it’s possible to make something yourself for “free”, rather than buy the item at a cost. If we do this, we need to take into account not just the resources used to make the item, but also the time we spend on making it. If you put a value on your time, you haven’t really obtained the item for free – it has cost you whatever you would be expected to get paid (at an hourly rate) for the amount of time you devoted to making the item.
This means that, not only are you not always saving money by doing or making something yourself, sometimes you might actually be losing money if your time could be more valuably spent on a different pursuit.
For the busy professional or entrepreneur, Time is probably the most valuable resource that we own and not one that we should squander thoughtlessly. This means that we need to fully recognise the value of our time and take measure to make sure that we spend it wisely.
If we can view our Time with the same attitude as we view our Money, we can learn to budget that Time in the same way.
For instance, if we are shopping for a new appliance for the home, we would probably set ourselves a budget of what we want to spend – this will depend upon how much money (resource) we have available for the item, how much the item usually costs and what we want to achieve with the item (what the item will offer us).
We can approach time-based tasks in the same manner. We need to ask ourselves what it is we wish to achieve by doing the task, what that will do to enhance/change our lives and how much time we have available to devote to the task. We would then need to set a time limit for achieving that task.
A good way to set time limits on the smaller tasks and activities is to set a timer of some sort to remind us when to stop. This could be a low-tech, kitchen style device or we can use the function on our smartphone. For tasks that we have decided to devote an hour or two [PB1] of our time to, it’s a good idea to set a reminder 10 or 20 minutes before we want to finish working on that task. This will allow us to evaluate how much of what we set out to achieve that we’ve actually achieved and how much more time we reckon before the task is complete. This way, depending on how important the task is to us, we can make an informed evaluation on our progress and how far away we are from accomplishing our goal. If the goal is important, we can decide to spend an extra ten minutes to complete, if necessary. Or we can stop and decide to devote more time to completing the task at a later date.
If we finish the task before the allocated time, we can truly view this as time “saved”. We will then be able to reward ourselves with this time-saving by spending the extra time on doing something we enjoy.
After all, if we go shopping and manage to spend 20% less money on the item we set out to buy, we will see that as money that is available to buy something else. We can now see our saved time as time that is available to spend on something else.
For ongoing tasks, we need to adopt a similar attitude and budget chunks of time that we are willing to spend on the task – per day, per week, per month, etc. We need to evaluate on a regular basis in order to make sure that we are using our time effectively and making the progress we expect. This will allow us to identify any problems/setbacks and adjust our time budget accordingly. This will make sure that any setbacks cause as little delay to our goal as possible.
When we learn to budget our money effectively, the result is that we eventually have more money available to spend on our treats and pleasures in life.
By learning to adopt this sort of attitude to Time, we will eventually learn to budget our time more effectively which will leave more time available for us to spend on activities that we enjoy and that are important to us (our treats and pleasures). This will result in a better work/life balance, leading to more time to spend with family/friends, a more enjoyable life-style, less stress and better health.
