Spend time wisely

Early on in our working career, we worked for a company founder that was obsessed with time.

At some point he sent out a company-wide memo stating; 'that each day all of us are granted a precious account of 1440 minutes. Everyone gets the same allocation. What is up to you is how you spend those minutes, because by the end of the day they will be all used up. Gone.'

His point was that successful people spend their allocated minutes wisely. They value their time and because of that they spend it where they can have the most impact; where it will deliver the most value. Warren Buffett gets the same allocation of time as the beggar sitting on the side of the road, but how each of these individuals spends their time is quite different.

Time is the most valuable resource in our lives.

We don't have a lot of it and because of its intangible nature it is very easy to waste it. We waste time by giving it away cheaply to those who thrive on taking it from us. We waste in on things that we have no control over, like the past. We waste it doing stuff that doesn't serve us.

Companies hire people to give themselves additional time, which management labels as 'productivity'. But then those same companies also create the internal culture where wasting massive amounts of this time in pointless meetings; or, doing work that just keeps people busy rather than adding any material value to the customer offering of the business, is totally acceptable. That's probably because companies don't normally measure how company time is being spent.

So at the start of this week of 10 080 minutes - where will you be spending your time? What time-wasting activities, projects, people, situations are you going to cut out? What 'worthy of your time' projects, innovations, people are you going to consciously choose instead?

Because in a week's time, these 10 080 minutes that you have now...will be gone forever. Spend them wisely.