If Time is Money, how much is your 12:30pm?
Intro
Welcome back, my good friend. Godwin, a Church member put up a question that I have used as the title of this piece. He was just joking around. However, there is an opportunity to think more about this joke of his. How much is your 12:30pm?
Time and Money
I had written about money before as being an expression of Time. Time is the real deal. Money, love, emotions, feelings, etc. all happen within Time. ‘Time no be joke oh’. But at some point, you need to know how much your seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, and decades of time are actually worth. Next paragraph.
Time Valuation
I first encountered this challenge while trying to give a woman whom I was to tutor her child my price for the month. I was previously used to accepting whatever people are willing to pay for me rendering my services while starting out. I was working two other jobs at the time, so I simply added what I earned in the two other jobs and divided that by the active number of hours I put into the jobs; I arrived at a figure per hour. She paid close to it at first, and when I began teaching her child, I asked for a raise when she needed me to commit more time. This time, I multiplied the current amount she was paying per hour by the additional hours I was to put in. She paid. This is basic. But the fundamental thing about time valuation is “the value you are able to deliver within that time”, not your wish, or what others are getting.
Building Personal Value
Two things: Education and Knowledge. Education through schooling or through self-learning is one way to build personal value. Knowledge comes from the careful application of information gained through education. One can learn how to make ‘moin-moin’ (a Nigerian food), cool, that’s education, but where, how, when, to whom do you sell that ‘moin-moin’, that’s knowledge which could make all the difference. You could sell the same product five times more if you answered the questions knowledge asks.
How Much my 12:30pm is Worth
I’m an early bird. I do all my productive work before 1:00pm. Anything after that has to be very routine or something that has to do with just documenting what I had thought of before 1:00pm. 12:30 is my own peak period of thought and engagement. My 12:30 is worth more than Elon Musk’s current net worth; It is priceless in terms of what we may know today as money. It can only be valued in terms of Commitment.
My Advice
Value your time, especially your peak periods of productivity. Value other people’s time equally, and if they don’t seem to value theirs then you probably need to be elsewhere, with someone else, doing something else.
Cheers.
