“An inch of time is worth an inch of gold, but an inch of
time cannot be bought with an inch of gold.”
What does this mean? I think it means that money can be made with time, but money cannot buy time. Why is this so important? Well, most of us desire to make money and to be successful-- the most successful people seem to have all the time they need to be productive, but time is the same to everyone so what makes successful people's time different? They seem to be more efficient with it. Successful people realize that unsuccessful people waste away a majority of their time doing the wrong thing.
Decision making-- Have you ever spent your time doing something and wondered what else you could be doing with your time? YES, we all have done this. I wonder everyday, as I sit in my college classes, if I should be out getting experience as an entrepreneur instead. I tell myself that I am studying now in order to build myself up for something later.
Every decision has an opportunity cost. The opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the next best alternative. In other words, if I have a choice between going to a movie and staying at home to do homework and I decide to go to the movie, my opportunity cost is the amount of homework I would have gotten accomplished in the time I was at the movie. For every decision, there is an opportunity cost, a decision forgone.
On a larger scale, let's say I decide to go to college after high school: My opportunity cost is not only the money I am paying for tuition, but it is also the four years of money I am not making and the hours of experience I am not obtaining.
Wasted money can be made back, wasted time is gone forever.
Equally important in decision making is that time spent making a decision is time taken away from utilizing our choice. I was reminded of the story of a horse who stood in between two equal sized bales of hay, unable to decide which one to eat, he died of starvation.
Time passes no matter what we do, we have no ability to slow it down or speed it up. What we can do is use our time as efficiently as possible which will maximize our productivity with the time that we are given.
Take a look at what you did in the last 24 hours... are you done? Good. Now think about a few things you could cut out of that picture and add something more productive. Whether it's the hour of TV you watched after work or the extra 30 minutes you laid in bed this morning- I bet there is an easy replacement that could make your time that much more productive. Remember, we are only given a certain amount of time to utilize and every activity has an opportunity cost.
Successful people have the same 24 hours in a day that everyone else has, but it's what they do with it that makes all the difference.
"Time is what we want most, but use worst"
-William Penn
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