“Time is Money” — Was Never More Accurate Than Now!

With a start of a new year, new leap in self-development and a new round of investing a memory of the golden rules of wealth from a classic book “The Richest Man In Babylon” passed my mind.

If you haven`t read the book, which would surprise me, here are the golden rules in their original translated shape:

• Start thy purse to fattening
• Control thy expenditure
• Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment
• Make thy gold multiply
• Guard thy treasure against loss
• Ensure a future income

While modestly, but successfully implementing this rules in practice it got me thinking that they can have a much wider application, beyond personal finance. I didn`t have to search for long — “Time is Money” aphorism was known by me since early childhood.

So, according to this phrase, time can be considered just as another type of currency that can be manipulated by the same simple but effective kit of rules. Should we try them out?

Start thy purse to fattening

The highlight of the rules, in more simple words — paying yourself first. The meaning of the rule is to allocate and save a specific percentage of income prior to any necessary and unnecessary spendings, no matter what.

If we convert this rule to a time — looks like it means to dedicate a specific amount of time every day or week to something that is not in your casual routine. 9–5 job, playing games, watching TV or, god forbid, doom scrolling are, roughly speaking, your personal time giveaway to somebody else, and there is a line of people to take it.

All of us deserve a REAL time for ourselves. A freed time and its application — is what will determine your future. The next rule is meant to help in achieving it.

Control thy expenditure

The rule of discipline. Financially speaking, it dictates to cut unnecessary and emotional spendings and keeping a sharp eye on your overall budget regularly.

Timewise, is to create a daily schedule that allows you to organize and track your time expenditure. Following this rule surprisingly makes 24 hours day quite a long entity with a lot of options to set a time aside for yourself.

Time and money has one property that they share with water — liquidity. If you have luck of time and money — than you have a leakage of this currencies somewhere that should be identified and eliminated ASAP.

Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment

Here is backbone of the rules, as almost no one become wealthy by just savings. Investments — is what make a difference. Extrapolating this to the time currency — the job is to find where to invest so hard-won time. It can be a gym session, a side hustle, learning a new skill or, you got me, writing of an article with a hope to bring some value to the reader. It can be anything that brings you joy and have or will have a positive impact on you and your environment. A step a day in right direction will have a compounded effect and inevitably will help to reach your goals and even beyond.

Sure, like any financial investments, something might not work or even have a negative ROI(return on investment). But doing nothing is not an option. Your time is like a bunch of cash during a hyperinflation. So, use it or loose it.

Make thy gold multiply

Well, it`s not that easy with just money, so how to multiply time? — In realty, we have more control over time than we think. For example, it is difficult to doubt the fact, that regular exercises and healthy lifestyle prolongs life. Here is your extra time, possibly, years of time.

Another application of this rule to the Greek god Chronos controlled matter is to produce free time out of the proceeds of your earlier free time actions. Your new skill, or side hustle may turn profitable and will release you from a 9–5 job and other unpleasant time consuming actions. You will have more and more time for you own deeds.

Furthermore, entrepreneurship is undertaking some actions to produce the product under your supervision while using time of others. Depending of the quality of the idea and the desire to materialize it, the overall time spent towards your goal can be indefinite.

Guard thy treasure against loss

Time requires no less protection than wealth. From simply avoiding people wasting your time to keeping a cool head in emergency situations and not trading “nickel for a dime” by taking unnecessary risks to save a few seconds.

One wrong turn in life can reduce available amount of time, remove control over personal time or even completely eliminate it. Unlike money, that can be secured for you by somebody else, your time safety is solely in your hands and no one can help you to preserve it.

Another way to preserve time — memories. Our brain likes to simplify it`s life by deleting duplicative files. The same “Groundhog Day” repeated thousand times becomes a single memory. On other hand, colorful, meaningful life full of diverse memories is what really preserves our time.

Ensure a future income

You cannot call yourself “investor” if you don`t have a long-term goals. The financial profit is pretty much risk multiplied by time. Same with our “ticking friend”. Future time amount is dependent on successful implementation of all rules combined, from healthy body, allocated and wisely used time and avoidance of the stupid decisions.

The earlier preparation started, the better that distant moment in life will be, if it comes at all…

Well, I hope that my humble point of view on this vital topic sparked some thoughts that I will gladly read in comments.

“Time is what we want most but what we use worst.” — William Penn