Do Business Better

10Treat Time Like Money

An entrepreneur friend of mine relayed something he'd heard at a business roundtable: “Everyone uses 100% of their time.”

Simple as that sounds, it's pretty provocative. Because the logical followup is, “doing what?”

Ask anyone, and they'll tell you they're busy. But busy doing what, exactly? Building the life and business of their choosing? Or filling their calendar with unproductive, yet self‐imposed, commitments? Making themselves better? Or numbing themselves with mindless passivity?

525,600 Minutes

Each of us has 525,600 minutes each year. Except for leap year, when you get an additional 1,440 minutes, this number doesn't change. Doesn't change for me, you, the rich, the poor, the uneducated, or the person with a PhD.

We all get the same number of minutes. How you commit those minutes correlates directly to your success and happiness.

Time Is Money

In business, we commonly hear the saying, “Time is money.” If that's true, you'd think people would be more discerning with their hours. Sadly, most people mismanage both their money and their time.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income (half earned more, half earned less) in 2017 was $61,400. Median income per person in the United States in 2017 was $31,786. That's $15.89 per hour on a 2,000‐hour work year, or just about 26 cents per minute.

What are your minutes worth? Run the math. Now look at your daily routine.

If your time was actual cash, would you spend it the way you're ...