Would you rather lose time or money?
I often ask these questions in my workshops and get mixed answers. For many people the concept of losing money is understandably scary. There’s a simple reason for this. They have a mindset of scarcity rather than one of abundance.
In this mindset, losing money becomes a fear, but you must remember, you can always make more money, but you can never make more time. The reality is you can never get back time, once an hour, day, year is wasted, you can never get it back. You can leverage money, earn it back, replace it and grow to a point that you may not ever remember the loss, but time is finite. In life, you only get so many minutes.
The fear of losing money is a major factor in keeping many business owners from moving forward, but when you understand that time is your only finite asset; you can put this fear into a more useful perspective. A business owner is much more likely to take intelligent risks, and ultimately make better decisions, if they don’t have that fear. Questions like what if this idea doesn’t work, what if this is the wrong decision, what if, become much easier to answer when you know you can always make back what you invested into that decision. Yes, you must evaluate your decisions; you must test and measure everything that you do, but you must also be decisive, take risks and move on. The fear of losing money can keep you from being decisive. If you’re going to fail, it’s best to do it quickly and move on to the next idea.
But, you may ask, isn’t time equal to money?
It is, therefore you must invest it wisely. Are you relentlessly investing your time moving your business forward? Or are you poorly investing it to make yourself feel good, by checking off a bunch of “to do’s” that weren’t vital to your business’ success? Is your time focused on profitable activities, business growth, business opportunity, or are you in reactive mode?
Reactive mode usually wastes time, while proactive mode provides you the control and choice as to how and when you will invest your time. Gaining a clear understanding what is more important, time or money, can help you ultimately make better choices on how you spend your time.
Ask yourself the question for each task that you do: Is this activity moving me closer to increased revenue or profitability? If not, then either STOP IT, or delegate the task, and get back to doing something that will add to your bottom line.
And remember, time is irreplaceable – treasure it, invest it wisely and make sure you get a return on your investment. To learn more about investing your time wisely, join me for an upcoming TimeWise workshop.