Of all the things you possess, time is the most valuable.
The wealthiest person alive and the homeless person living in the gutter get exactly the same amount of time. Unless one dies that day, both get the exact same allotment of time. The rich man cannot buy more and the poor man is not granted extra time that day due to his unfortunate position.
With time so valuable, and no way to get more of it in a day, we must be ever vigilant of those who wish to steal our time. These people do not get extra time in their column by taking yours. Instead, they seek to consume your limited resource of time for their benefit. You get the bill.
Can I Have a Minute of Your Time?
It’s only a minute! Such a small thing to ask.
Salespeople do it all the time. If you give 10 minutes I will… As if 10 minutes are worthless compared to their sales pitch.
When determining the value of you time almost everyone gets it wrong.
It goes something like this: If you earn $60 an hour at your job you are worth a dollar per minute. But that is only what your employer is paying you! The employer is making more than a dollar per minute from your time or you will find yourself unemployed quickly.
And what about the value provided to society by the your employer’s goods or services sold that you make happen? You see, you are worth a lot more than $1 per minute. You are getting compensated the dollar per minute, but your time is worth a lot more than that.
Minutes Add Up
Time thieves do more damage than you imagine because they work in aggregate. Let me explain.
Many years ago my tax practice had over 2,000 clients. Today, as I slowly head toward retirement, I have under 400.
I pointed out a cold, hard fact to my peers this tax season. Last tax season I e-filed 303 tax returns for clients by April 15th; 376 by October 15th, the extension due date.
If every client during tax season wasted a mere minute of my time, over 5 hours of time would be wasted when there is no time available to waste. (300 minutes/60=5 hours.)
This should not be confused with quality time with clients. There is serious value in a short conversation when the client drops off documents. There is serious value when calling a client with questions when preparing the return. There is serious value in the time spent with a client reviewing the return with them.
Time, like money, can be spent on things that create more value or on frivolous things. You can spend money on junk food. You can waste personal resources causing more financial spending later. Running the furnace (or the AC for my friends in warmer climates) with the windows open is a really bad idea if you want to have financial wealth.
The same applies to time. How many times do I need to discuss the weather each day? How about those Packers! Can I interest you in a discussion on politics? And if you think a political discussion is a good use of your time, think about your attitude if the discussion were about a politician you were not all that fired up about.
The real problem is that “a minute” is rarely a minute. “Can I have a minute of your time?” already wastes 25% of that minute asking the question. Realistically that requested minute takes 10 minutes minimum. Probably ends up taking 20-30 minutes. More, if you are unlucky.
Going back to the lesson I had this tax season for peers, one mere minute extra taken by every client adds up to 5 hours over the 10-week regular tax season. Ten minutes takes 50 hours when you are already sleep deprived and suffering from lack of family and personal time!
Let me do some math for you. February 1st through April 15th is 74 days, unless it is a leap year. Let’s say you work 12 hours every day without a day off. Seventy-four days x 12 hours each day equals 888 hours, or 84 hours per week.
That is max out time available during tax season for our friendly tax professional. Assuming our hero can even handle those hours without illness, there is a remarkable lack of time for family and self.
Now we can clearly see our tax professional’s dilemma. If the average clients wastes a minute asking about the weather, local sports team, and politics, you are a lucky human being. Five hours out of 888 is only a half of a percent of your entire tax season worktime allotment. Or, our tax pro has to work overtime and average of just over 4 minutes per day without compensation (300 minutes divided by 74 days).
But we all know it never takes “just a minute.” Ten or fifteen minutes is more like it. Maybe even 20 or 30. Ten minutes on average for every client adds another 50 hours to the workload without a single cent more in compensation. This is time from family, sleep, and even me time.
Keep this up long enough and your health will fail. At one minute per client we spend an extra 4 minutes at the office without pay. When a more realistic 10 minutes are taken we end up another 40 minutes at the office without pay. And it can get much worse.
We need to reiterate that we are talking wasted time. Quality time with a client is not wasted time. I might work more hours when unique circumstance arise. I had two clients with ID theft this tax season. It was discovered when I went to file the returns. One was an 80 year old man that got talked into sharing info with a scammer, the other was a young couple with three children that had their identity stolen when a medical facility had a data breach. (The children had their ID stolen.) In both cases I worked hours extra to help resolve the problem without charging extra. That is my dedication to my clients. And all this is only possible if I keep idle chit-chat to a minimum.
What About Your Time?
A tax office with a set number of clients is an easy way to add up time wasters and the cost. But what about you? How many minutes and hours are squandered? Minutes and hours you never get back. Minutes and hours you can’t buy more of. Minutes and hours doing something you did not want to do.
Reading a book, watching a movie, time with a significant other, and the kids are not wasted time. A walk in the park is not wasted time.
Dealing with a spam call is. Idle chit-chat about nothing is. The Packers will do just fine without my opinion being discussed ad nauseum with anyone willing to squander their most precious asset. The same with politics, the all-time master at wasting time. Your desire to talk about your candidate online and in the real world will not change the outcome of the election. All you are doing is wasting your time, time you don’t have to waste. Of course, you should still vote. That is important and a good use of time. But rehashing the same discussion again and and again? Might want to reconsider.
Here is the reality check.
In America the life expectancy is around 78 years. Women live a bit longer, men a bit less. We will stick with 78 to keep the math clean.
A 50 year old can expect to live another 28 year/10,220 days/245,280 hours. If you allow random people to waste a mere one minute of your time each day (10,220 minutes), 170 hours of your life evaporates. Or, 7 days of your life gone like a puff of smoke. Almost like dying a full week early all because a single minute was wasted daily on political discussion, the weather, the war in Iran…
And you know people are robbing you of much more than a minute every day. Most of us are lucky if we can prevent less than an hour of lost time daily. Time arguing with a friend, family member, or loved one. Arguing instead of working together for a common goal.
Sales people are masters at stealing your time. Late last year a copier salesman made my office a project. He wanted 10 minutes of my time. Nothing at all. (Sound familiar?) I never returned his call. I owe nothing to a cold sales call. Nothing! After 30 or so attempts to reach me he started calling employees and wasting their time. Then he crossed a very big line. He called pretending to be a new client. I said I don’t take new clients. That is when he made an offer I will not repeat here. Let’s just say the police were called, his employer fired him, and the company gave me an apology. Time wasted? Hours! Not the promised 10 minutes.
And I am not alone. When you watch TV you waste 20 minutes or more on commercials every hour. That is not why you turned the glass teat on in the first place, is it; to see commercials? One sporting event may expose you to more than an hour of commercials. That is an hour of wasted time (unless you watch the event, wanting to see an hour of commercials).
I am not saying you will eliminate all wastes of time. And sometimes you will waste time intentionally. That is healthy. Adequate sleep is necessary and not a waste. You can watch a movie or read a novel. Entertainment can be well spent time. As long as your gain something from it and it is something you wanted to do.
No, the time wasters I am talking about are those things that when you walk away from them you take a deep breath, relieved to be away from the situation. Things you did not want to do. Things you did just to be polite or to avoid conflict.
It is not polite to you or the salesperson to pretend you are doing the sales person a favor by granting him an audience. And always remember, if they say they want 10 minutes, it will be a lot more than that.
You are not doing your friend a favor by discussing politics with them when you had no desire for such a conversation. Both of you are burning your allotted amount of time at the same rate in such cases.
Give yourselves the gift of time, the only way to get more time, by excising the wasted time.
You have the exact same amount of time every single day as everyone else. You get no extra time today. The richest guy and poorest guy get the same exact allotment.
What you do with your time determines the outcome of your life. Choose wisely.
