There was a post on X I read today about valuing your time. The gist was that since this person had waited 9 minutes to save $4, they valued their time at $27 an hour. I get the point being made. Time is valuable and you need to set the value of your time.

It is an inarguable fact, every second you waste is a second gone. So is every second you use wisely. Gone.

If you just ruminate too hard on this fact, you may start to produce a light salty discharge from the edge of your eye. Each second I am not with my spouse is one less second we are together. And every moment I am not producing something is one less thing I will have produced or will have influenced others to produce. When I sit down to play my daily round of Super Mario Kart, I am truly devaluing my time in a devastating way because not only am I not producing value, or spending time with my spouse, daughter, or grandchildren, but I paid Nintendo $60 bucks for this game and then like $80 a year for a subscription and, and... wait.

As I approach this terrifying mental precipice, thankfully I remember one important thing. Value is complicated.

Spread it out

To bring this back to a professional context, you absolutely need to value your time. Time is your most valuable resource. But it important to value your time not just in a monetary context, at least not all of the time. For a set amount of time each day, thinking that time is money is important. In the original example, if that 9 minutes could truly be monetized for more than $4, then it probably was a waste. But is that every really the case? And this consistent need to make your time immediately valuable is particularly dangerous. As professionals, it is hard to deny that all time is actually money, but sometimes it is just a down payment on future money. Example: training. Training is expensive in monetary, time, and energy costs that add up quickly. But all of that is actually a down payment for the future.

The more you know about the work you need to do, the less time it will take to achieve. This leads to more time or money for all the other things. (Hopefully both time and money.) And, I will submit, career oriented training is something that both you and your employer should be contributing to. Some of your work time and some of your personal time should be spent learning about your profession. The value of this is better than any compound interest will ever pay.

Just be careful

The danger is thinking that every second should be assigned a comparable monetary cost. Why? Because there are a lot of experiences that are infinitely more valuable than others. Spending a day with your grandchild at a theme park when they ride their first roller coaster is (approximately) 1.7495 million times more valuable than learning a tech skill when compared one to one in your heart. And you can invert that equation when it comes to figuring out which is going to let you feed your family (and by the way, theme parks aren't free either). You need to do both, in a proper balance that only you can do. And it is never going to be easy to decide.

In either case, you need to spread your time around and set thresholds for all that time. Some tasks are only valuable because they give you supply you energy or rest. I don't race Bowser and Princess Peach for the Mushroom Cup to make money or memories, I do it to reset my brain and give it a break from feelings and learning. And sometimes, spending 9 minutes waiting at a gas pump leads to a post that leads to inspiring someone else. And overall that is worth more than the nine wasted minutes, don't you think?