'Time Bucks,' Currency of the Workplace

For as long as most of us can remember, we've been taught that time is money. Well, I've come up with a fascinating zero-sum scenario designed to show just how comparable time and money truly are.

Imagine if you will that every minute of every workday is valued at a dollar, provided to each of us at the beginning of the day in a single imaginary stack. (The calculation: 60 minutes per hour for about eight hours, converted to currency and rounded up to make an even $500.) The hitch is that, just like time, we're required to give up one of these "time bucks" with each passing minute, no matter the activity, until by quitting time we are all out of money.

For anyone in business, the first impulse is predictable—"How can I make the best use of this currency?"—even though, like time, you can neither save nor accumulate the money. So the question arises: Are you putting your "time bucks" to the very best use? Or are you wasting them, or allowing others to steal them from you?

Certainly we can choose to spend our dollar-a-minute currency anyway we want; most of us are more than willing to spend a few minutes here and there with people we like, or activities we enjoy. But looking at our available work time in just this way makes clear the actual high cost of wasted time.

Now, if you're creating something of value, solving a bothersome problem, placing a sales call, or helping a colleague complete an important project or an assistant learn the business, certainly your "time bucks" are being well spent. But imagine your frustration if a telephone operator puts you on hold for an inordinate amount of time, a co-worker offers a roundabout explanation in response to a direct question, or an idle prospect spends precious time in chitchat.

If we could have a full-day tally showing where we spent our $500, minute by minute, we'd find that some bucks were spent wisely and some drizzled away, but others were taken from us—stolen, really—either by notorious time-bandits or by well-meaning but time-wasting individuals.

This whole time-is-money discussion centers on the matter of personal choice: if a minute were a dollar, would we be as inclined to surrender 20 minutes or an entire afternoon to a wasteful purpose or person? Wouldn't we rather buy knowledge or invest in insight?

This is not to say that pressing business matters have to consume every one of the workday's 500 minutes. Trying to wring productivity out of 500 minutes each day is neither healthy nor reasonable, and doing so would make a dull if driven person of anyone.

Also, I concede, we can't put a "time buck" value on every minute of the day (what about eating, commuting, or sleeping?), plus each of us has got to spend countless dribs and drabs of time on the myriad details of the day.

All this talk about the value of workday time also drives home the importance of personal time. Why shouldn't we apply the same measure there? Indeed, what if we applied an even higher value to personal time, say, $3 per minute for, say, five hours in the evening, which, give or take a little margin, results in a "time buck" allocation of nearly $1,000?

Considered in this way, how miserly we might be when it comes to personal time: "I can't believe I spent both an hour and nearly $200 watching that stupid reality show!"