I Started Treating My Time Like Money, and This Happened

What’s worth more — time or money?

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I have been fascinated by the concept of time.

If we dig a tad deeper, we’ll know that almost everything in life is about time. We work hard to achieve our dreams to get to a time where we feel accomplished; we wait for holidays to spend time with our loved ones. In fact, our life is the time we are here or

Life = Time we are alive

Before I had this realization, I spent my time like I was going to live for a thousand years. I was saying yes to everything and everyone; I was always available for calls and social. I was sleeping for 10 hours every day and was bingeing something or the other on Netflix or Prime Videos. I was doing what I was asked to with no mutual benefit and no sense of how valuable my time was.

Last week at my little sister's 25th birthday, I had an epiphany while going through our childhood photos. We’re little kids, now the toddler who couldn’t stand properly in the photos turned 25.

I didn’t know how to react to that.

We don’t really understand certain things in life unless we find something relative to compare it with. For example — you only notice your weight when you see a skinnier version of yourself on a Facebook memory or that you’re rich when you find old journals from the time you were broke. It’s all relative.

After seeing the old pictures, all the things I had read about time started making sense. I understood what those 100s of self-help and business books were trying to convey and why time is the most valuable commodity.

The Experiment

To take action about time value realization, I decided to run an experiment for a few weeks — I planned to invest my time as if it was money.

I wanted to know how I would spend my time treating it like the most valuable commodity.

Here’s what I learned from my experimentation. It was overwhelming in the beginning but was a fun activity to learn about myself and my habits

1. I became mindful about my screen time