2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44
The other day I started watching a movie about the value of time and our life. The authors were so good at conveying their idea that already at the sixth minute I pressed pause: I felt sorry for the time even for an interesting film. I also looked at money differently.
The film "Time" 2011 belongs to the genre of fantasy and tells about the future, where genetically modified people live. Every person in that world stops aging at the age of 25, but eternal life is still not guaranteed, since the countdown of time begins. When there are zeros on the watch on the hand, the heart will stop and the person will die.
Time can be earned as we make money. Time can be shared with other people, time can be stolen. It takes time to pay for goods and services. In this case, the countdown never stops. Money does not exist in that world.
An interesting hint was also contained in the fact that the main character was not a rich man and most often he had no more than a day on his watch.
Time is like money
Already in the first minutes of watching, a simple thought struck me: the film is not so fantastic. Yes, genetic modification and the method of reckoning are science fiction. But in fact, today we sell our time for money, and then with this money we buy goods or services, in fact, paying for them with our time.
I quickly figured out how much I was selling my time for, and then used that to see how many minutes, hours, or days I was paying for my apartment, food, equipment, communications …
When, in the sixth minute of watching, I realized that I did not want to spend two hours of my life on a film, no matter how interesting it was to me, I quickly began to rewind to try to catch whether the authors were developing the idea presented at the beginning.
Throughout the film, many were running out of time. People were ready to deceive, steal, rob, and even kill for the sake of time, and today we sometimes ask ourselves the question “How to kill time” and create a colossal demand for time killer applications.
How many years are you willing to give for a new car?
While rewinding the film, I came across an episode where the main character buys a car and pays for it for 59 years. 59 years for a piece of metal, plastic and leather! It is clear that in the film, hypothetically, you can live forever, earning time, but in reality, our life is limited.
Are we really wasting our time on valuable activities and relationships? What do we spend our time on when we pay for new gadgets, entertainment, services and the like? Is all this worth even a minute of our life?
I don't think there are correct, universal answers to these questions for one and all. But I am convinced that it would be nice for us to ask ourselves about this before we devote our time to something or someone or decide on a new purchase.
How to calculate the real value of things
It will be very helpful to always remember that money deceives us by distorting our sense of the true value of our purchases. In fact, as we have already understood, we pay with our time. And if you see how much of our time things or services cost, then it becomes an easy matter.
For someone with a fixed working day and a fixed salary, calculating the temporary equivalent will be easy. You just need to divide the salary by the hours spent, and you will find out how much your hour is worth.
Freelancers of all stripes will have to find out how much time was spent on a project (and then divide the money received by the hours spent). Timekeeping of several projects can be carried out, or it can be carried out continuously in order to always have an average equivalent. Moreover, it is not so difficult with modern devices.
Another assistant for those who use the Google Chrome browser and often make purchases online can be, which will facilitate the task of converting the price from money to real.
Now that you have a time equivalent, you can divide the cost of any item by it to find out how much of your time it costs. For example, you found out that on average you get 10 Imperial Credits per hour of work. And the new holographon costs 240,000 Imperial Credits. Your old one is still quite useful, but you really want a new one, because your neighbor already has it and has a cool design. We divide 240,000 by 10 and we get 24,000 hours - the cost of a new holographon. This is one thousand days or almost 3 years of your life.
True value
Are you ready to give up such a segment of your life for a new gadget? For a big or trendy name on a product? And this is no longer a matter of high cost and economy. After all, when I pay with my time, the opposite effect may also happen: the choice of a more expensive purchase, since I do not agree to give my precious time for a low-quality product. This is the essence of managing your finances and time wisely.
It is necessary not only to save time and money, but to use them for something that has real value.
This is what I wish you with all my heart. Be smart and fill your life with true values.
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