There are various items online, offline telling us repeatedly, that time is an asset which is given equal to everyone. Each one of us starts from equal at the start of the day and ends equally at night. Be it Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or you — Time is 24 hours for everyone. I fully agreed to this thought. When one day it suddenly dawned upon me, that time is given equal to all but is not equal of everyone.

What does this even mean?

In simpler terms, time is nothing but a stock of different companies (companies here referred to as each individual) which might be distributed equal in nos. for all but in actual sense, has different values. And thus, began my quest to understand the real value of my stock, my time. More importantly, what to do next when I now have a permanent stock in hand.

Starting value of this stock:

It is true that everyone’s, and I mean literally everyone’s, stock prices start from zero. Nobody is so unfortunate that their time on earth is a waste for their own time. It does not work that way.

“Stock ‘Time’ will increase in its value from the start of your life and will be guided by your actions and efforts throughout.”

Rich man, poor man paradox:

Some might question, that nepotism, family business is a thing and that some people would of course have an advantage even before they begin to speak -like leading actors, politicians, businessmen. The answer to this is yes and no.

1. First no, because as I said, a crying child will have no advantage to anyone unless they start showing some symptoms of brilliance or even not, but at the time of birth everyone’s equal.
2. Yes, because consider this. An actor’s child might have high expectation so even though he starts at zero, even their little sparks might take their stock’s curve at a much steeper speed compared to those poor children who might show high sparks but would take time to come in the eyes of public.

Do remember that right now we are just taking about the value of the stock, not the struggles to reach that value.

Pricing of the stock:

We now discuss the most important aspect of the discussion — what do we actually mean by the prices of this stock?

This simply can pertain to a dollar value for every minute you spend in a day, or more plainly a comparative value of your time against someone else’s. Bill Gates one minute for running to get groceries is much much more expensive than our minutes to do the same (admit it, that’s true). I’ve talked about using this knowledge to better manage your time in another article, but here the fact is, pricing can be done in both the aforementioned ways:

1. Absolute: Simple value of what you earn from your knowledge, experience, fame that you will lose when you are not around. Bill Gates (yes again), might earn ~$100 per second, but this is not his real stock value. If he would quietly sit and do nothing, he would still earn most of this money with the already invested money. So his real value would be his regular income sources which come to him based on his own services.
2. Qualitative: There are times when you do not earn anything but your presence is most valued. Times when talking to and helping a friend, or just simply hearing out a friend. People will value your time more than anyone else’s. This is difficult to quantify but easy to compare, and that’s where comparative evaluation comes into play.
3. Hybrid approach: This is what is ‘my most go-to approach’ for looking at my or anyone else’s stock values. There is no simple way to equate yourself with someone with higher absolute value. For equal absolute value, you could easily vote on who has the qualitative advantage (which will vary against different individuals opinion) but for equating with different absolute value person I have a way, which again is much controversial yet doable. Suppose that spending time talking with the other person was chargeable, how much would you pay for it? How much would you pay for their friendship? When you round up these things you can get an estimate of the price of their stock. And this equally applies to finding your own price.

Conclusion:

The real intent of this article is not to sit down and calculate the price of your ‘Time’ stock. It was to understand that given time is distributed equally, it is still up to us to increase its value. There are various ways by how you can get rich, and one way is to change your time lens. You should be more critical from now on that,

“Your aim in life should be to increase your time’s value — both absolute and qualitative — and not be in the shadow of making just the best use of time. Make an investment in time that gives you the highest return in terms of your ‘Time’ stock.”

Happy living!