The answer is:  It depends on how you use this resource.  As with many other things, time is indeed a double-edged sword.  Some people use it to reach for the stars while others use it to dig their own graves.  Like money, we can invest it, spend it, waste it, or hoard it.  Just like money, what we do with our time can be the cause of success, failure, growth, or decay.

Value and Time
Value in business is intimately tied to success.  This can be seen through market leadership, yearly growth, customer satisfaction, monthly sales, or any other factors that are used to assess business success. 

Generally, the higher the business scores on these factors, the higher the value of the business and thus the higher the business’ financial worth.  These factors, however, take time to build and the time it takes depends on how skillfully the business leader makes use of this time. 

Thus, the time value of a business ultimately has something to do with how much profit it can generate in a specific period of time.

How Much Is Your Time Worth?
For some people like consultants, tutors, freelancers and others who charge by the hour, the value of time can be easily seen.

Financial consultants or lawyers, for example, may charge $500 per hour.  Tutors, freelancers or transcription professionals, on the other hand, may charge $30 per hour.

In such cases, the value of time is measured according to the set of skills a person has as well as the number of hours logged in.

Now imagine the financial adviser taking 2 hours daily to transcribe his clients’ reports for the day.  If they had focused on their own skills, they would have been able to invoice $1,000.

Likewise, imagine the transcription professional raking the yard for an hour daily instead of delegating this work for $5 per hour.

Why are they doing a $5 per hour task when they could be earning $30?

Some people, however, measure the value of their time according to their hourly productivity.  This goes for writers who measure their productivity through pages per hour, mechanics who measure productivity through the number of automobiles serviced per hour or salesmen through the number of units they sell per hour. 

The key to maximising time value for these people are speed and skills.  In this case, a person in sales who nets $20 per unit sold and is capable of selling 5 units per hour has an hourly time value of $100. 

Now imagine the opportunity cost or the monetary losses incurred if the same person has to help inventory products for about 2 hours daily or takes an hour everyday to do the paperwork.

Core Competencies
If you have noticed from the above examples, time value is maximised when you concentrate on your core competencies or most valuable skills. 

Now think about the most profitable activities in your business and evaluate how much time you are concentrating on these activities rather than being bogged down by less profitable tasks.  The more time you spend on “valuable activities”, the more you value your time.

These steps form a structured, practical blueprint for focusing on your own value.

Try it and see what happens.

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