The World’s Most Valuable Commodity: Time

Published in

The Startup

4 min readAug 21, 2015

Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day-to-day. Every evening it deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during that day. What would you do? Draw out every cent. Each one of us has such a bank. It’s called time. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night, it writes off as lost whatever you have failed to invest wisely. It carries no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day, it opens a new account for you. If you fail to use the days deposit, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against the tomorrow. You must live in the present on today’s deposit. Invest it in every opportunity. The clock is running. You’ve got to make the most of today right here, right now.

Time Waits For No One

Follow up on every lead. Make every second count. Always be closing. Every opportunity missed equals money lost. Remember, yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.

To realize the value of one year, ask a student who failed a grade.
To realize the value of one month, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.
To realize the value of one week, ask the editor of a weekly newspaper.
To realize the value of one hour, ask the person who just missed a train.
To realize the value of one second, ask the person who narrowly avoided an accident.
To realize the value of one millisecond, ask the person who took the Silver Medal at the Olympics.

How To Combat Time

Or·gan·ize. If you are like the majority of people who sleep six to eight hours per day, leaving you somewhere between sixteen to eighteen hours of time left to earn, you will quickly realize the value that time plays. The clock is running…

Set your calendar. Account for EVERYTHING. Sleep, gym, travel, personal tasks, work tasks, calls, meetings, reading, training, etc.
This may be the first time realizing how critical your time is and it may scare you once broken down. Overcome this and you will soon be able to accomplish more than ever before.
Hold yourself accountable. It’s easy to push things on to the next day. Now is not the time to fall prey to time. Your mindset needs to turn into making the most out of every second. Share your calendar with others. Let them know what they can aspire to. Hit every objective. Exceed expectations.
You will soon begin to realize the value of sleep compared to time. Six to eight hours? Time is winning, not you. It’s time to take control. Cut out the nonsense.
Automate scheduling. Try YouCanBook.me. It’s a FREE online booking app that has helped set up hundreds of thousands of meetings, appointments and get-togethers. You can now spend your time more wisely. No affiliation here. Just a great product.
You will get to a certain level of understanding time. It can and will get crazy. Understand what you are willing to sacrifice vs. accomplish and plan accordingly.