Before I tell you how to get this job, think a little bit
about your strategy. Would you spend it
on cars, houses, and gizmos? Would you
spend it on experiences such as travel, vacations, and amusement parks? What about investing that money for later returns? Would you shop around for the best deal for
your money, or would any old shop be fine?
Would you use only what you want and let the rest get chucked out? Or would you spend every last penny
somewhere? Really think on it.
Do you have some answers?
Do you know what you would do?
Good – I’ll tell you how to get the job.
I first heard about this job several years ago from a talk
show host. I was a young Svenlet getting
toted to or from school or extracurricular activity when I heard about it. My dad would listen to talk radio in the car
and expose all of us kids to the news and other stuff of the day. When I first heard about it, I was giddy with
fanciful thoughts. $86,400 a day? Heck, my parents didn’t make that in a
year. I would revisit this fantasy from
time to time for many years. When I
first heard about it, though, the only things I thought of spending it on were
Legos and video games.
Are you ready to get started? You are?
Great! You’ve got the job!
The job is your life.
Using the clever adage that time is money and an exchange rate of 1
dollar/second (inflation adjusted from the ancient Greeks), you can probably
see the job more clearly. Every day we
are gifted 86,400 seconds to use as we see fit, but at the end of the day, we
lose the seconds we do not use.
Now think back on the answers that you gave when it was a
job with actual dollars. Now think of
the analogy of your life and how you use those seconds. Do they match? Most of us would agree that they don’t. The reason is we don’t think about time as a
currency.
We take it for granted that we will have time to do stuff in
the future, but don’t do anything today to make it happen. It’s like saying you want to buy a million
dollar house in the future, but don’t invest any of the $86,400 that you get
every single day.
We tend to think about tangible things easier than
intangible goodies like time. So, let’s
paint the analogous picture for the million dollar house with time as our
currency. The million dollar house could
be something like writing a book or having a family. Let’s say having a family. In terms of time, it takes time to find a
spouse, get to know the spouse, get married and make a home. It takes time to make a baby (the fun part!),
to incubate the baby, feed, dress, burp, change the baby. It takes time to teach the child about good
and bad, what is important, how to behave, how not to behave, how to control
passions, and when it is okay to let them fly.
And if you have more than one child, there is more time committed to
this family thing. Many people take a
look at the price tag and decide not to have a family. At least not yet. And then put it off until later, when there
might not be a later.
However, similar to real estate, a family is a time
investment where we can reap huge returns over time. Or lose the investment. Same with money, using time has its own risks. But without risk, you miss the reward.
Take a look at the writing a book example. I’ve heard many people say that they wish
they did something like writing a book or learning to play music or learning to
paint, but decided not to pursue.
Why? Well, the price was too much,
and they didn’t want to invest the time into it. I think that folks call that a speculative
investment.
And similar to money matters, managing time takes
practice. The more that you use it, the
better you get at things like spotting a deal, or using time efficiently, or investing
for a superior return.
Also, there is no guarantee that there will be a
future. For example, the million dollar
house could be sold before you raise enough scratch. Or the price of the house could have gone up
two- or three-fold where it is no longer attractive (also, I guess the price
could have collapsed, but I’m wondering what that would mean in terms of
time…). Or you could get transferred out
of your job. That definitely puts a
damper on things. Does that mean we
shouldn’t invest for the future? No – it
just means that we have to be happy with what we did with today not putting all
of our time into being happy in the future.
And lastly, just like any job, you’ve got a boss. And just like any boss, they’ll do a
performance review and rate how well you did your job. How well did you use that money? How well did you use that time? We’ll have to answer to the boss at some
point. The question is: will you get
promoted, transferred, or fired?
God bless,
Sven
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