This isn’t no personal finance expertise blog. I just thought, how about comparing time with money and I realised that they are both valued equally. They are both here to vanish, finish and deplete, and the best part is we can’t do much to not let them go away.

So then I thought, how about treating my time as money. I was clear that if I treated my time as money, I was sure to earn money. A more careful thought made me realise that there can be various ways in which I can manage my time better and make the maximum use of it. Some of the ones, I go to know and others I created. Happy to share them here:

Eat that frog

Heavily inspired by Brian Tracy, I feel one of things that always puts us behind, is the act of procrastination, and we hardly even realise when it turns into a habit. If only we get into a habit of finishing the bigger and tougher tasks first, we have plenty of room for others. We are also mentally free when we are done with the bigger complicated tasks.

Save and spend time wisely

Just like any money lying idle in the account doesn’t fetch any return, so are few days where you have no agenda. Try to invest your time in yourself. Every minute spent on self, yields self-awareness and reflection of self. This helps us to improve and learn. Along with this, it is also important to take time off from work here and there. Longer trips are delightful but those small ones also do the trick sometimes. You only realise the value of a trip when you come back from it, rejuvenated.

Delegate and trust

Sometimes we get into the rut of doing everything on our own, without realising that we might be spending some really important hours doing something which is way less worthy of our time. If we want to make time work as money, we need to learn to delegate and trust people. This is also an essential life skill. When we delegate, we also help people learn and grow and contribute to their overall development. In the process, we save time for spending on other essential tasks where we are truly needed.

Being assertive and saying NO

Saying NO doesn’t always amount to spoiling relations. It actually shows that you care for your time and work. Also, when we say NO to someone for something, we can always give some alternatives to not sound too straightforward. When we say no for a task, we actually save that time for something more worthy, more valuable. That is a far better investment than to slog and do something that we are reluctant to do.

Whether time is money, or money is time, remains a debate. I have, however, found that I need to make my time work for me.