After you’ve lived enough life, you realize that money is not your most valuable currency.  Your most valuable currencies are time and love.  Use endgame thinking and the logic makes the case.  If you run out of money but have time, you can likely get more money.  But if you run out of time, you likely won’t care too much about the money.  And while money certainly has value, it can’t buy love.

When it comes to money, we can choose to spend it with no long term return or invest it and earn interest.  The same can be said of time.  One of the biggest mistakes we can make is confusing a time investment for a time expense.  Interestingly, the reasons for doing so are very similar to the reasons why many people fail to invest.  It’s not logic that gets us, it’s emotion.

Opportunity Cost

Here’s how it works in business.  You have a meeting with someone.  You agree on next steps.  Your schedule is tight.  You know you should take three minutes to send a confirmation email. But you’ve worked with this person before and you are feeling the rush of the day.  I don’t have time.  Unfortunately, things go awry.  A few details get lost, and the whole thing blows up.  Now you are stuck with an emergency and have to take 30 minutes or maybe three hours fixing things.  Why? All because you saw those three minutes as a time expense.  Not a good time management strategy.  You could have gotten back far more than those three minutes had you invested up front.

Planning is always a time investment.  A failure to invest that time up front will result in an expense on the back end.

Opportunities Everywhere

Reaping the benefits of compounded interest doesn’t require huge investments.  Many small ones will do the trick as well.  Besides confirming emails and proper preparation, examples of time investments can include:

• Setting an email aside for a little while to review and edit after you’ve calmed down
• Having someone else review your work for accuracy and effectiveness
• Checking with someone before a project due date to see if they are on track
• Asking one more question before forming an answer
• Taking a moment to look someone in the eye and encouraging them
• Taking a moment to express praise for a job well done
• Taking a break to rest and reset

With the speed of life and business, it’s easy to miss opportunities.  In the moment, it’s easy to lose focus and allow your emotion to fool you into thinking you don’t have time.  But once you start to practice time investments, little by little you start to see the interest you’ve earned in time. 

Hard to Measure is Still Real

The interest on time investments may not be immediately detectable.  It may come in the form of increased efficiency.  You may realize that you are dealing with fewer emergencies and getting more done.  Sometimes earned interest pays back in something even harder to measure.  When you add value to time in the way you work with others, you are partnering with them for their success.  Your relationships deepen.  Trust and appreciation grow.  And sometimes as a byproduct, you get the bonus of time.  Others are more motivated to look out for you, to lend you a hand and to help you get things done.   You show them a little love and they are more likely to reciprocate.

Real Life

The best part of all this is that it applies not just to business but in all areas of life.  Investing time in important things always pays back one way or another, some time or another.  The key is to be clear on what is most important and scheduling actions that work towards those things.

It’s not easy.  Never forget that urgencies are rarely important, and the important things are rarely urgent.   In our immediate gratification culture and business atmosphere, everything seems urgent.  Priority and context have gotten lost.  Important things tend not to call your cell, email you, or text you.   But unless you prioritize the important things, making them urgent, unimportant urgencies will take over and consume your waking hours.  

Figure out what’s important.  Figure out what you love.  Invest your time.  Do the important things, do what you love, and preferably do it with those whom you love.  That is the trifecta of life.  When you invest your time wisely, you learn one of the core truths of this thing we call “time management.”  It is not time that we manage, it is the value we add to our time.