Time: The Most Precious Resource We Have
“My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”
This rather philosophical quote is from the late Steve Jobs, and while it might be seen as an easy thing to say with billions of dollars in the bank, he was right. The average person has a total of 618,000 hours in their lifetime. Of these, about 400,000 hours can be used productively to impact our family, our friends, at work and in our community. But are we making the most of them?
With so many ways to spend this precious time, both online and offline, how can we get the best from it? How can we spend our time in a productive and meaningful way? As the old cliché goes, “the happiest people are those who make others happy” so how can we put this into practice? How can we share our time with others, making them happy as well as ourselves?
Timesharing
An interesting model that allows us to achieve these goals is timesharing. As the name suggests, timesharing lets people share their time — by offering services, skills or simple errands to others and receiving a time credit instead of money. The value of the service is simply based on time. Regardless of nationality, gender, age, religion, wealth or social status our 60 minutes is the same for all.
To facilitate this model, Timesharing Platforms (TSPs) offer an innovative way for people to participate in society both as givers and receivers of services. They operate by using time as a form of currency. For every hour a person volunteers, they receive an hour credit in return, which can be used to receive a service for themselves. Units of time can be used immediately, be saved for future use or donated for use by other individuals or charities.
Some people have called this “timebanking”, but the concept of a “bank” is outdated and outright wrong. The word is misleading, because time is not loaned and it does not inflate or deflate in value. Without getting into the detailed socio-economic side of this argument, let’s look at the history of TSPs, their challenges and the many opportunities technology gives us to best use our “most precious resource”.
Timesharing History
The bartering of time has been around for thousands of years. Unlike timesharing, “bartering” suggests that A gives a service to B, and B offers a service to A in return. Timesharing is not a two-way relationship but a multi-layered ecosytem whereby A gives a service to B, B gives a service to C and then A receives a service from C.
The early examples of timesharing date back to the early 19th century in Birmingham, UK, in the form of a labour exchange issuing notes of 1 to 80 hours. It only lasted two years but was clearly ahead of its time. It is also claimed that the timesharing concept first started after World War II in Japan by local women bartering time in exchange for food, shelter and clothing.
More recently, TimeBanks USA was formed in 1995 by an American law professor, Dr. Edgar S. Cahn to expand the knowledge and field of timesharing and its impact on individuals, youth, families, communities, the environment and the world. According to Timebanks USA’s website there are 116 timebanks with a total of 9,801 members. The largest timebank has 770 members in Pennsylvania and the smallest (curiously) has only one member. That’s an average of about 85 members per timebank.
A similar model in the UK called Timebanking UK, has 239 timebanks in the UK with a total of 43,038 members. This calculates to an average of 180 members per timebank. On average each member has donated 75 hours in total in the UK.
It’s great that people are sharing their time, even if it’s only one hour per year. But with such a powerful model of sharing, you would have thought membership would be much higher. In comparison, Facebook has 1.45 billion people on average logging in daily in Q1 2018.
So, what’s the problem with traditional timebanking?
The Problem
The main problem with traditional timebanking is that the time credits received can only be used with the members of the timebank from which it was received. By definition, this means members are limited to the services within that community, and as we can see from the statistics above in the USA and the UK, this can be very limiting.
The second problem is that traditional timebanking is not attracting the younger generation. In order for timesharing to be adopted globally, millennials must recognise this as an opportunity to learn new skills, expand their network of friends globally and make them more attractive to employers who value their social capital.
The final problem is access to services on a global level. Most timebanks are either managed on an excel sheet or on a very basic app. These timebanks don’t allow me, sitting in Singapore, to learn Chinese from a teacher sitting in Shanghai. The technology available to us today, like video streaming, is not being maximised.
The Solution
The solution is an inclusive platform that invites all existing timesharing platforms to join and exchange their time credits with each other. The key is inclusivity, not exclusivity. We believe timetech is the answer.
Timetech is the world’s first social equaliser using blockchain to exchange time. Through this new technology all timesharing platforms — charities, non-profit organisations, other timebanks and corporations with a strong corporate social responsibility mission — to exchange time credits, using timetech tokens. Timetech will revolutionise the way we spend this time, how we connect and live more meaningfully with each other, transcending nationality, gender, age, religion, wealth and social service, making one hour of service the same value for everyone.
Blockchain technology will allow us to give our time not only to our neighbor, but to someone on the other side of the world whilst ensuring its indelibility and authenticity.
The future
Traditional timebanks are great examples of how people can share their skills within a community. Our mission is not to discourage them, but to embrace these other organisations and provide a powerful foundation for their growth and global reach from a younger audience. Timetech is the natural evolution of timesharing, in terms of both technology and thinking, which can enable timesharing to scale to new levels of mass adoption and become a force of real social impact.
Sources:
UK data — http://www.timebanking.org
USA data — https://timebanks.org
