Time is one of the most important assets you have. Time is not the same as money. Despite the truism “time is money” the reality is that no matter how much money you have you cannot “buy time” ….
or can you? I’m wondering if it is possible to buy time.
There are 24 hours a day and there are 7 days = 168 hours per week so that sounds like time is finite.
Being more productive tends to mean working “smarter not harder” but what does this actually mean when it comes to “buying time”
Buying Time a 3 step process:
STEP 1: Calculate how much your time is currently worth
A simple formula for working out how much each hour you work is worth to you:
Income ÷ Hours worked = Hourly Rate
If your income for a month is $17 500 and you have spent 4 days per week for 7.5 hours per day = 120 hours:
$17 500 ÷ 120 = $145.83 Per Hour
Based on this example, your hours are worth $145.83 each and every hour.
NB: This is not the same as a charge out rate for a couple of reasons. 1. There will be time in your week that is not directly billable.
2. Ultimately you want to move towards a product based business vs a service based business.
STEP 2: Analyse the way you spend your time
If you are trading hours for dollars and your income is dependent on billable hours, how you spend your time is critical because the time you spend doing things that are not billable impacts your overall income.
Let’s look at all the tasks you do in your business outside the actual billable work you do for your clients.
Business Building Tasks are the tasks that build and grow your business:
- Networking
- Prospecting
- Client proposals
- Developing new product
- Writing blog posts
Business Admin Tasks are the tasks that support your ongoing business:
- Invoicing, accounting, bookkeeping
- Admin tasks
- Diary management
- Booking travel
- Postage and “pick, pack and send”
- Offie cleaning and organising
Take a reality check. Make a list of all the tasks in your business. Identify whether you consider them to be Business Building or Admin and track your time for a week or 2 and see how much time you are spending on each task.
STEP 3: Find someone else to take care of your tasks or find another way to do the tasks you do
It’s your business. Start with the Admin tasks and take a good hard look at how much time you are spending on these tasks.
Ask yourself, who else could do this? If I paid someone else, how much would that cost?
If your hourly worth is $145.83 per hour and you pay someone else $20 per hour, and you use that hour to do Business Building tasks instead of admin tasks, what difference could this make to your business.
If you are spending time on bookkeeping, why would you not spend $30 – $40 per hour to have the accounts taken care of by an expert and free yourself up to work on high value tasks in your business?
Take the time to realise where your time goes and find a way to buy back your time.