Time is not the same as money. It can not be hoarded or multiplied. It is a flowing commodity. We are all moving forward at the same speed of one hour per hour and one day per day.  We have to use it or lose it. Everyone has to sleep, ideally, eight hours a night, a third of our lives. We can decide how we spend the remaining 16 hours.

We can use our time or sell our time, but we can’t save it. Depending on what we are doing, it goes for a range of prices. I get zero dollars for watching television and have nothing to show for it except an hour of entertainment. I get zero dollars for cleaning the house, but I have a cleaner house to show for it. I got 25-50 dollars an hour for tutoring, and when I photographed weddings, up to 100 dollars an hour. Those pictures kept their value as long as the couple stayed together. If they broke up, their investment was worthless. 

There are so many choices between time and money. We had to fix our light fixture in the kitchen that had been out for about four months. I called an electrician, and it was 97 dollars for the trip out, $400 to diagnose it, and hundreds, possibly more, to fix it. Tim and I are not electricians, but with a couple of YouTube videos and a trip to Home Depot, we fixed it ourselves. We spent four months and four hours getting it fixed. What’s the rate for that? 

What has always been interesting to me is when two people value the same activity differently. I make dinner for the family and think that was my job for the evening. Then some professional retires from work and learns to cook for leisure. Is cooking work or play? School children are forced to read books and write essays for school. What they think is a waste of time, I do for fun. 

I used to sell life insurance, and the whole program worked off of actuarial charts that predicted how long everyone lived based on their age and health. It sounds intimidating, but the numbers are not locked in. Take smoking, for example. If a daily smoker stops for a whole year, their premium can go down by half. That is because the data shows that people who don’t smoke live significantly longer.  

Time for us only goes in one direction. We don’t get to redo sixth grade. We don’t have time to waste on regrets or get trapped in nostalgia. We have to do the best with the time that we have been given.