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Fortunes are spent each lifetime on things that sustain us, and things that drain us.  But what is the ultimate sustanance of life?  If we consider ‘life’ to be the period of time that we are conscious and alive (as opposed to unconscious and/or dead), then time would be a universal currency of ‘life’.  The more time you have, the more life you have.  For example, a person that has 70 years of life would be considered to have more time than somebody who has 30 years of life.  As such, the person who has more could be considered more ‘wealthy’, if we attributed time as a currency.

Now if time is a currency, it must be able to be traded, bought, and sold.  The question is, how does one buy time?  If Walmart, Ebay, or Amazon don’t sell it .. how does one acquire more time?

For a business, a first stage of financial management is to asses the situation and identify where debts or cash outflows occur.  One can never acquire more cash if one constantly has the cash being sucked out through expenses and liabilities (unless you have a very high inflow of cash, but this is a non-efficient state).  Similarly, if time is constantly being drained, one can never become ‘time-wealthy’.  Thus comes the first step of acquiring more time:

1. Identify and Eliminate Time Drainage

Time drainage is classified as anything that takes your hours away each day/week/month/year.  But of course, first the definition must be made of what is “your time” so that you know what you are losing.  “Your time” is classifed as time that you have free will and control over.  For example, using the toilet would not really be considered “your time”, because when you gotta go, you gotta go.  However, reading while you’re on the toilet after you’re done, would be considered “your time”.  Sleeping to replenish the body would not be considered “your time”, because if you don’t sleep, you will go mad and die.  However, sleeping in, long after the body has had it’s required delta sleep, would be considered “your time”.  The time spent working at a job is not considered “your time”, because during that time your free-will and control is limited by somebody else (your employer).  However, your employer is compensating you for your time, and of course, the old adage of “Time = Money” comes into play.  This adage then begs to question “How much is my time worth?”  That is for you to determine.  Let me say this - there are 27,000 average days in a human life.  You have one life to live, and you are spending your time currency every single day until you run out.

Time spent on hobbies is “your time”.  Time spent watching TV is “your time”.  The minimum time spent on eating is not “your time”, but any extra time outside of that is.  So when you consider all this, the average day of a working adult is something like this:

a) Not my time, but must/should be done and I can’t do anything about  (eg, hygiene, eating, sleeping) - minimal
b) My time that I am selling (eg work, selling 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for $75,000.) - majority
c) My time that I am spending/investing (eg watching TV, travelling, exercising) - secondary

[pie chart]

What most people do is they sell their time for 50 years of their life, put the cash into an account to gain interest, then buy time back again with their accumulated wealth.  What most people don’t realize, is that this comes out to almost a net zero equation, since the time you buy back with the accumulated wealth is not worth as much due to age, ailments, inflation etc.  For most people, time to cash investment only sustains their standard of living, not improve it.  So we have billions of people, trading their time for cash, using that cash to occupy time slice (C) in various ways.

The more optimal arrangement would be to spend less time in (B), and more in (C).  But as we know from financial wealth, the poor spend, and the rich invest.  So consider this, are you spending or investing your time when you: watch tv, exercise, read magazines, get drunk?  Consider eliminating “spending” time, and turn it into “time investments”.  Other areas of possible time savings:

* commute - drive during off-peak hours, or live closer to work
* showering - get in, get out.  You’ll even save water!  Although for some, showering may be a spiritual element of their lives, and as such, would be an investment.
* typing - learn to touch type.  At the end of your life, how much time would you want to have spent on pushing buttons?

2. Buying More Time

Now we come to the crux of the article.  Buying more time.  By assessing your own situation, you now realize you are selling your time for a dollar amount.  The person you are selling your time to, now owns your time and is putting your time to their uses.  Similarly, you can also buy time from other people.  This is a key switch from the “employee” to “employer” mindset.

Here is a unique thing about capitalism: each person’s time is individually valued.  There will be greater and less demands for it, depending on the current state of the society.   A key then is to sell your own time at a premium, and buy other people’s time (to add to your own time) at a lower rate.  This is a key element in outsourcing.  At this point, I recommend reading Tim Ferris’ book of the 4 Hour Work Week.  It will introduce solid concepts in outsourcing.

Some ideas and suggestions for buying time:

* Have food cooked and delivered for you.  If cooking is not a passion or hobby, then your time is probably more valuable spent on something that brings you great pleasure.
* Have somebody organize files and documents for you.  This could be considered an investment for the disorganized.

Bonus Concept: Parallel time
The more things you can do at once, the more you multiply that time-chunk.  For example, if it took me one hour to wash clothes, and one hour to read a book, if I did them in serial, it would take two hours.  If I did it in parallel, I now have a savings of one hour of time that I can spend elsewhere.  Question: “How can I create more parallel time?”  Note that buying somebody else’s time also counts as parallel time. 

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