Do you value your time?

One of the mistakes I often make is to place too little value on my time.

What do I mean by that?  Well, I give away my time too freely and do not protect it enough.  Let me explain.

I give away my time, I like to help people and don’t like to charge them.  I am often quoted as saying “for the price of a decent cup of coffee, I’ll help anyone”.  But I have to remember that my time is worth more than $4 per hour.  Isn’t it?

Do the maths with me and then you can apply this to your own situation.

If I want to have an annual income of $100,000 and achieve this by working 40 weeks a year, then I need to earn $2,500 per working week.  If I want to work for 50 hours for each of those weeks then my hourly rate becomes $50.00.  But if I only want to work 30 hours for each of those weeks then my hourly rate becomes $83.33.  So each hour of my working week has to be worth over eighty bucks.

I need to remember this so that when I do offer to help someone for the price of a cup of coffee I am mindful that I need to earn $166 during the next hour.  Is that possible?

The key here is to understand how valuable time is for you.

For me, I know that I can earn $1000 per hour when I am in the right zone.  So I need to make sure I FIRST create the opportunites to do this, and then I can plan to have coffee meetings!  If I try and do it the other way around I am likely to fall short of my target.

And protecting your time is the next important aspect.  By this I mean making sure there is time enough for you, the person.  This means finding ways to recharge your batteries and put energy back in your tanks.  It’s this energy that will keep you going when times get tough.

So please, learn from my mistakes.  Value your time and do the important things first.  And secondly, protect your most important asset – yourself.