“There are times to stay put, and what you want will come to you, and there are times to go out into the world and find such a thing for yourself.”
– Lemony SnicketThe key is in not spending time, but in investing it.
Stephen R. Covey
The previous are two quotes I feel like properly illustrate the concept I’m about to explain here, which is frankly – Investing your time unwisely for the sake of patience is not good nor a virtue, but rather a waste of time. As the saying goes time is money, which means that wasting one is wasting both as an interconnection of the two. While I don’t necessarily agree with this in the terms of all life situations, I find a better term to be “Time is worth the value of the money you’re losing or gaining during said time period”.
Sound complicated? Let me simplify it real quick:
You work at a regular 9-5 boring job, you get two 30 minute breaks or however those things work (I haven’t worked a regular 9-5 in so long I couldn’t tell you) and during said breaks, you waste your time.
You don’t invest it wisely.
Instead of spending the hour doing something like learning a craft to increase your side income – while you slave away at Bob’s Burgers, hoping one day to get that coveted regional manager job and increase in paycheck – you spend it surfing twitter, reading the latest news about the kardashians or some bullshit like that.
You DON’T read a book like How Rich People Think to increase your knowledge of the world, money matter and overall general matters.
You DON’T browse a blog like Wall St. Playboys to establish a baseline of where you want to be in life one day.
In fact you don’t do anything that could contribute to any cash flow sources, expanding your knowledge, improving your mindset and health or wellness.
Instead your break is spent eating a couple $2 burgers and stalking the newest apple of your eye’s twitter or facebook profile. The thought of empowering yourself, increasing your cash flow or income potential, or even learning and researching how to do such doesn’t even cross your mind. Instead you think you have life figured out, you think your $7.25 an hour job that pays you a meager paycheck every other week (which of course, is one of the primary reasons you need to do something like have a side cash flow/source of income) will be able to carry you through the month, you don’t want more, you don’t want better, you don’t want progress.
And that’s not good at all.
But that’s ok, that’s what I’m here for.
For the rest of the post I’m going to go into entrepreneur mode and talk in terms of business, but if you understand the principles behind what I mean you will be able to relate these to your own life and maximize your time and your money being made.
Alright, say you have a job to be done, such as securing a venue for a meeting or keynote presentation – you can spend the hour or couple of hours it might take to find it, set it up, talk to your firm or company or finalize everything….
or
You can hire the job out to someone under you.
Now I want you to understand this concept completely, because it may cause some confusion.
When I say this, I don’t mean hit the craigslist gigs offered section and find someone to do the job at the lowest possible dollar amount, because it will then be done in a very shitty way. This even relates to a Bill Gates quote that I wanted to bring up – “I will always choose a lazy man to do a hard job because a lazy man will find an easy way to do it,” – which I agree with, but only to a certain extent. This quote should be extended to the terms of the most “qualifiable” man honestly, as anyone for a job will not cut it.
But let’s think about the above stated example in terms of value of time spent .
You can spend that time finding a venue, costing yourself time that could have been spent elsewhere developing cash flow or life improvement, or you can invest your time wisely and maximize the value of your time (Value of Time Spent = $$$ Spent|Gained / Time Spent|Gained).
Basically, if you make more money spending the time you could be using on a task getting another qualified individual to do to create other sources of income, you have invested your time wisely. If the adverse happens, you have made an average, although most likely not wise decision.
So if you spend an additional $100 of business revenue hiring out the venue search, and instead spend those couple hours speaking to/closing out a key client for your business or firm, worth thousands of dollars, you have effectively maximized the profit potential of your time.
Apply this to the basic concepts of life and you will find success.
The little things or jobs that you find it would be in the best interest of your time to be done by someone else, make it happen. There is an Abundance of wealth out there, and an abundance of both sources of direct cash flow and sources of indirect cash flow, and having both is a key to investing your time wisely. You should have a direct source of income (A Job, Business or Career) and an indirect, side source of income (selling an e-book, learning web design and coding, drawing/painting or graphic design and selling artwork online, flipping items, etc) that ideally can make you money while you sleep. That is the goal. Owning a business can do such, but owning a business with a legitimate source of income on the side (that you DON’T spend, mind you, because you’re already familiar with basic budgeting techniques and how to keep money in your pocket as to not have to dip into your savings) will keep you from finding yourself in financial straights. With a side source of income, you can use your own money for the purpose it’s supposed to be used for (creating income, as it’s well known you must spend money to make money) and you still have a safety net of money in case of emergencies.
Plus this concept can also be applied to material possessions people feel the need to have:
Spending more time working/out enjoying life than you do at home? Renting will suit you better anyway.
On the contrast, don’t go out that much or find yourself to often be with other friends with cars? You might not need it, and while the previous comment is not saying “Depend on or use anybody,” it’s more so a staple of the point of the post, a better investment of time vs money. The money you could have spent buying and maintaining said car, you can slide your friend a couple bucks for gas whenever you go out and use said money to invest and make more out of it.
Eventually you’ll thank me when you remember this advice at the end of the year and you have 50K saved that you otherwise would’ve spent buying, maintaining and wasting on a car.
Which one will help you more at the end of the year, the 50K saved from wisely investing your time (plus the additional 5-10K [possibly more] that you were able to make and save with the money that you spent and properly invested
I’m gonna leave this post off with a few key points to wrap it all up.
- Once again, “Time is worth the value of the money you’re losing or gaining during said time period,” meaning if you can get someone to do your job for less than it costs for you to do it, do so. You can spend said time increasing your cash flow. Do not confuse having patience with bad investment of your time.
- If the value of something immediately depreciates after acquisition (I.E. cars) options should be looked into (I.E. leasing) as to not tie a large portion of your current cash flow into said option.
- You should always be looking to increase your cash flow, if not directly than indirectly. Establish new side sources of cash flow, expand on those already present, figure out how to expand the audience of your primary business. “If it’s not making you money, getting you pussy or improving your health why do it?”
- Another interesting way to quote this is with a quote uttered by Lil Wayne, “I don’t write shit ’cause I don’t got time, ’cause my seconds, minutes, hours go to the almighty dollar”. Now rap fans might say it’s unethical for him to suggest that he uses ghostwriters because he has more important ways to spend his time (and if you know Wayne you know he doesn’t even write down lyrics for such to be the case) but the principle behind such is the point of this post. If you can get someone else to do something, spend said time increasing other sources of income, take the credit for it and repeat the cycle, why not keep doing it if it increasing your money and time investment?
- After you read this post/blog, what are you going to do? Are you going to ignore this and go backt o watching your favorite tv show, surfing twitter or all around lolli-gagging that isn’t making you any money or helping you get any pussy? or Are you going to actively go put these points and strategies in motion, go out there and make 10x more money, expand your/start a business and never have to worry about where your next dollar is coming from, because you already have 100 saved to supplement it.
The post Valuable Time: Don’t Waste it on Patience – Invest Wisely appeared first on Live Like a Lord.
