David A. Windham

The Value of Time

We harvested our sweet potatoes and planted our fall garden. Tonights harvest moon1 marks the passing of the season. This always remind me of how we value our time. Even the phrase ‘our time’ implies that it belongs to us. My time. Your time. Sure, it’s really all we have… each moment in the passing of time.  It bends through space to form the fourth dimension2. Unfortunately, the impetus for writing this was so much more shallow. If that’s what you’re looking for, here are a couple of quotes to ponder3. 

  • Truth was the only daughter of time – Leonardo da Vinci
  • Time is a game played beautifully by children – Heraclitus
  • The first thing necessary for dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. The present moment is all we have – Rollo May
  • All truth is cooked, time itself is a circle – Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long. – Cesare Pavase
  • It’s weird that I am constantly surprised by the passage of time when it’s literally the most predictable thing in the universe. – Randall Munroe
  • Time eases all things – Sophocles
  • Time bears away all things, even our minds – Virgil
  • Nae man can tether time or tide – Robert Burns
  • Time, that aged nurse Rocked me to patience. – John Keats
  • Time is money – Edward Bulwer-Lytton
  • Time is a waste of money – Oscar Wilde

I had my own little epiphany about time many years ago. I used to make some long haul drives running back and forth to from home, college, and my girlfriend. What I noticed was that the driving at night always seem to take a shorter amount of time so I started making them at night. What I determined is that time is related to your senses and that the reason it appeared to be shorter was that you perceive less in the dark. There are no landmarks, or signs, or even clouds to mark the time passing. Time is experience. 

Last night, we were in bed thinking about buying some new sheets because I tore a tiny hole in our favorite pair with a toenail kicking them into position because I like to sleep cool and my better half could use the electric blanket all year.  She scours the tablet searching for the sheets that are just right and points out a pair because their manufactured regionally using organic cotton and says “but they’re over $300”. To which I say “think about it like this… we sleep eight hours a day 365 days a year and we spent more than that on food in the last month”.  Anything I do that regularly has value to me and my point was that we often don’t consider the value our own time. We spent thousands on several days vacationing trying to make some memories. We buy items we barely use. Folks spend ridiculous amounts of money on vanity items. I tend to value the mundane in terms of how much time is involved. I eat three hours every day. I spend five hours a day in front of a computer screen. I’m always impressed by people who choose practical shoes because we wear our shoes for half of our lives and they’re literally the foundation on which we stand. 

This wasn’t my first time with using this argument which got me to about me thinking about noting it in an essay. I paid my way through part of college by working at a furniture store.  My boss there literally pulled me aside one day and said that he wanted to lower my commissions because I was making so much money. There are some various reasons as to why I was nailing it, but the one that I remember is my pitch when discussing purchases with customers. It went something like this: “Consider your time. If you spent eight hours a night using it. Isn’t it worth it. Is there anything else you do more?” I would ask. This worked for couches, chairs, and mattresses. Those are some of the higher ticket items in the store and the mattress companies would give you a second little kickback. I moved the upper end items and it paid handsomely. Asking someone to consider their time is an easy way to have them reflect on the actual value of something. 

I jabbed at a local acquaintance recently over his move to distribute his business documents using a third party service which charges the customer money and shares a percent with the business. He responded back to me with “well, isn’t your time worth money” the very same way I used it to sell furniture. I pointed out that it was his company time he was trying to skimp on to make money and not mine. I’ve been asked on several occasions as to why I set my hourly rate low in relation to some other software or web developers. I always answer that it’s not if you consider that a typical 40 hour work week for a full year is almost a hundred grand. Now, I don’t make that because I don’t work a typical 40 hour week and I only bill for productive time. Nevertheless, I usually respond “because I think it’s fair to both of us”. 

Even though I’ve used our propensity to value it, I’ve never equated my time to money because it’s cheap. Cheap in the sense that time is priceless and mine is not for sale.  What is for sale are my knowledge, ability, and skills because I’ve invested quite a lot of effort into them and that’s what customers are really after anyway. They’d do it all themselves if they had the appropriate knowhow. We like to play a game with ourselves in equating time to money and staying busy pushing the running wheel in circles. We should value experience over our time…  and the experience of those expensive sheets, even if I’m only awake for several hours a night, will last me over ten thousand hours, which comes out to 3 cents an hour.  I think that’s worth it. 

I’ll leave you with a quote from a book by Khalil Gibran entitled The Prophet4 that was gifted to me many moons ago. 

  • And an astronomer said, “Master, what of Time?”
  • And he answered: You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.
  • You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to the hours and seasons.
  • Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch it’s flowing.
  • Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness,
  • And know that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
  • And that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
  1. October 2020: Harvest Moon – https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/1520/october-2020-the-next-full-moon-is-the-harvest-moon/
  2. Spacetime – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
  3. Quotes on time – https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Time
  4. Khalil Gibran – The Prophet – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahlil_Gibran