How Am I Investing My Time?

In a lifetime the average North American will spend: Six months sitting at stoplights, Eight months opening junk mail, One year looking for misplaced objects, 2years unsuccessfully returning phone calls, 5 years waiting in line, 6 years eating, and 21 years watching television. An article was once published entitled, “If You Are 35, You Have 500 Days To Live.” The article went on to contend that when you subtract the time you spend sleeping, working, tending to personal matters, eating, traveling, doing chores, attending to personal hygiene, and add in the miscellaneous time stealers, in the next 36 years you will have only 500 days to spend as you wish. Think about how you spend your time. When all of the necessary things are done, how much time is left?

God did not give us all the same amount of talent. I believe we all have gifts but it seems that some are more gifted than others. God did not give us all the same amount of wealth. Some have more money than others. But God has given us each the same amount of time. Each person started the day with the same amount of hours as the next person. We each have twenty-four hours to spend today. Imagine a bank depositing $86,400.00 in your account at the start of each day. No balance is carried over from day to day. Any balance is deleted in the evening. What would you do if you knew that you would have money left over at the end of the day? You would do a withdrawal.

In a way we do have this kind of bank. It is called the First Bank of Father Time. Everyday we are credited 86,400 seconds. Every night, that which we don’t use is debited from our account. The bank of Father Time does not allow for overdrafts, there is no going back to deposit more into the account. It does not allow you to borrow from tomorrow. All we have is what we have at this moment. We say time is money.

But in reality time is not money. If you lose money, you can always make it some other way. We can never regain lost time. Whatever time we lose we can never get back. So the greatest investment we can make is not with money but with time. One of the greatest value based questions we can ask is “how am I investing my time?”