Time != Money
May. 17th, 2007 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nemorathwaldWe've all heard "Time is money". Whether time is money depends on which one of them you're spending. It's true if you're spending time. It's not true if you're spending money.
We have to spend our own time in such a way as to maximize the money from it. But I'd rather pay someone for the results I want; their time in itself is worth nothing to me. It doesn't help me if they take longer to give me results. It doesn't cost me if they finish quickly so long as it's the same result.
If you're paying money, you can't really receive time in exchange. The time it would take you to perform a task is longer than the time it would take a paid professional. The outcome would differ as well. There isn't an equivalence in the time you save and the time they spend. So ask yourself when spending money to receive time, are you paying for their attention? If not, how much is the result worth to you?
The problem with paying for the result of a service is that it's subjective. Time, by contrast, is easy to measure. That makes it convenient to set a standardized value on time. But we still don't really buy each other's time. The same person can do a valuable task in one minute, and a less valuable task in an hour. So our evaluation of what our time is worth is a measure how that averages out. We also take into account bits of overhead. Employees evaluate a wage to take into account time spent driving to work or thinking about solving work problems during free time. Employers evaluate a wage taking into account time spent in the office taking breaks for smoking, bathroom, drinking fountains, taking private phone calls or an email or two, and other necessities of life.
The corollory to thinking in terms of results is that I'm comfortable being paid "by-the-result", at a flat rate based on the market value of the benefit, rather than just measuring when I'm in the office. I don't want to feel like my wage is a punishment on my employer for the time they've taken from my warm body; I want to feel like I've been rewarded as a measurement of specific contributions! That's exchanging benefit for benefit. Territoriality about time can create a climate in which the transaction feels like an exchange of harm for harm; taking money in exchange for taking time. Then each party might want to ensure the other is losing an amount that justifies what they are losing. Who benefits from that? That's what I would call a lose-lose situation.
We have to spend our own time in such a way as to maximize the money from it. But I'd rather pay someone for the results I want; their time in itself is worth nothing to me. It doesn't help me if they take longer to give me results. It doesn't cost me if they finish quickly so long as it's the same result.
If you're paying money, you can't really receive time in exchange. The time it would take you to perform a task is longer than the time it would take a paid professional. The outcome would differ as well. There isn't an equivalence in the time you save and the time they spend. So ask yourself when spending money to receive time, are you paying for their attention? If not, how much is the result worth to you?
The problem with paying for the result of a service is that it's subjective. Time, by contrast, is easy to measure. That makes it convenient to set a standardized value on time. But we still don't really buy each other's time. The same person can do a valuable task in one minute, and a less valuable task in an hour. So our evaluation of what our time is worth is a measure how that averages out. We also take into account bits of overhead. Employees evaluate a wage to take into account time spent driving to work or thinking about solving work problems during free time. Employers evaluate a wage taking into account time spent in the office taking breaks for smoking, bathroom, drinking fountains, taking private phone calls or an email or two, and other necessities of life.
The corollory to thinking in terms of results is that I'm comfortable being paid "by-the-result", at a flat rate based on the market value of the benefit, rather than just measuring when I'm in the office. I don't want to feel like my wage is a punishment on my employer for the time they've taken from my warm body; I want to feel like I've been rewarded as a measurement of specific contributions! That's exchanging benefit for benefit. Territoriality about time can create a climate in which the transaction feels like an exchange of harm for harm; taking money in exchange for taking time. Then each party might want to ensure the other is losing an amount that justifies what they are losing. Who benefits from that? That's what I would call a lose-lose situation.
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Date: 2007-05-18 02:10 pm (UTC)I suppose one could extend that idea into retirement. Money is time because I have debts to pay (or food to buy, or whatever) and those debts do not change altogether much, month-over-month. So if I make more money, I may at some point take a vacation and not earn money, thus gaining time I would otehrwise spend in the office.