7th February 2011
`Money can't buy happiness. But somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a BMW car than on a bicycle'
Anonymous
We all have equal amount of time irrespective of our social and racial differences. However, the `commercial value' of our time is not identical for all of us. I discuss the concept of the commercial value of our time in my time management seminars. We all have some work to do and we are paid some money for the work we do. We are allowed to travel in a particular mode of travel and stay in a predetermined class of hotel. The difference in these parameters is based on what value our time produces for the society. People look for return on investment.
I fact the concept of return on investment is applicable for only for the time of people, but also the time of machines. Not every computer and television is priced identically. We are willing to pay a very high price for a computer for the various applications it is capable.
In my time management seminars I ask the participants to answer one question: who should be the beneficiary of your time? The immediate response used to be `I should be the beneficiary of my time'. But after a while the participants will realize that unless and until their time produces a value for others, their time has no commercial value. In our life, we take many investment decisions. But only few of us are serious and intelligent about investing our time on value adding activities and projects.
One way to realize how to produce more value to your time is to read books on great people used their time to produce a lot of commercial value to the society. Read and learn how the founders and Sony, Honda, IBM, Ford etc used their time to build a world class business empire. I am presently reading the book `Pour Your Heart Into It' by Howard Schultz build Starbucks. Amazing book and a case study.
Think for a while: have you made correct investment decision about your time?
N C Sridharan
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