Good morning, and thank you taking the time to stop by. I would like to address you as a fellow CEO’s
because I believe that each one of us, for whatever reason, have a business
perspective when it comes to living our lives.
Obviously, many of us work in some capacity to sustain ourselves and our
families and we do an extremely great job.
To what extent that we do our jobs, is of no importance, as long as each
of us have a clear indication of the need to not only survive, but to live
comfortably in our day to day lives.
I’ll be brief as I know that each of us has a tremendous
number of important obligations to fulfill as CEO’s, and besides that, today is
Friday. But here is what I like to
discuss: our time. Our time, as we each know it, is very
valuable. Heck, I don’t have to tell
you, look how you spend it. You spend it
going about your day planning important events, preparing for family activities, and
confirming everything necessary to be sure that you and your families are well
cared for. I do hope too, that one of the
things that is included in that time, is time for you to spend with your
family, or to take some time away from your busy schedule for just yourself. We know that things can get so hectic, that
we sometimes spend too much time putting out every fire that occurs in our
lives, and then forget the main reason why we do what it is that we do.
Correct me if I am wrong, but you very work hard in order to
make sure that you have a great quality of life. And with respect to time, you ensure that the
time that you commit to building a life for you and yours is time that becomes
well spent. So when it comes to time, our
time, it is very, very valuable. Forgive the redundancy. Not just in dollars is your time important,
but in terms of the overall benefit to you.
So your overall goal: to be successful,
to minimize as much of the conflicts that life presents so that you can be happy,
and have the necessary things that you want and need to make your life the best
that it is. But let’s not be fooled, we
do, from time to time, try to assess a dollar value to our time. What is that dollar value?
Before you answer, understand that I am not asking you how
much do you get paid on the job where you work, or how much does your contract
pay. I don’t want to know that someone pays you an annual salary of $150,000.00,
or that you get paid $12.00 an hr. I am
talking about your dollar value. Now, before you run off and say that whatever
it is, no one can pay you for your time, I want you, as the CEO in your life, to
place a dollar value on your time.
Why? Because, as we all know, or perhaps
many of us agree, time is valuable. So I
ask you again, how valuable is your time if you had to put a dollar amount on
it? Disregard whether anyone would pay
it to you, just how much is your time worth?
Let me digress for a few seconds.
I worked in the Rent-to-Own business for over 5 years. Back then, I don’t know about today, but you could
have rented a 19” television for approximately $10-$15 a week (plus tax and
insurance). And if you had kept that
television for the allotted time (12 months), you would have owned that
television outright for $988 (check my math).
Never mind the fact that that television in a retail outlet would have
sold for $200.00. But it was then and
still is, a service that the rent-to-own franchise provided. The same can be said for renting a car, a
piece of equipment, or a hotel room. The
service for that which you wanted cost more than the item itself. But the service allowed customers to enjoy
that product or service, without the benefit of overhead, or maintenance.
Now, back to us. What is the value of your time?
It may seem conflicting, but our time despite how valuable
we perceive it to be, we would have to conclude that if someone had to pay us
for our time, they would actually be paying us less than our time is
worth. Which, when you look at the
television example above, seems backwards.
Am I making sense?
Obviously, if you work for someone, you work on their
schedule, you work in their place of business, you agree to be paid according
to the scale of what their job entails.
That is an agreement, because that is what we need to do, in order to
take care of our family. But what about
those times when we are not working?
Does our value in time remain the same as the job that we work, or does our
value return to that which we establish? Or, does our value of our time, go down?
If you had to put a dollar value on your time, I believe
that we would all agree, that no one can us what our time is worth. Yet, we find ourselves accepting jobs that pay
us minimum wages, union wages, contract wage, or whatever the job pays at the
time. We find ourselves, breaking away
from what we believe our time is worth, to take on jobs, or projects that, in
essence, devalues our time. Am I
wrong? I believe that we take jobs that
pay us less than our time is worth because of the relevancy of our time, to
that of those who run their business on a different plane than we exist. Obviously, there is no job that will pay us
$100,000.00 hr to wash dishes, to wash cars, to drive trucks, to be a police
officer, or to be the President of the United States
I call us CEO’s because our lives are very much like a
business. As long as we need money to
live on, we run our own personal businesses.
But there are those among us, who run actual businesses, and their
responsibilities, while financially greater in many cases, have an obligation
to share-holders, who dictate how that CEO run’s their operation. Those CEO’s determine how to value time as
well for production achievement.
Conversely, between that CEO, who is not unlike us in many ways, because
many of them have families too, but they have the responsibility to place a
value on the productivity of their companies.
Those CEO’s, as we all know, require men and women like us, who are
willing to give of their limited, precious time, to help them achieve a goal. That goal is to produce a widget. Our goal, is to provide for our family. Between the CEO of the Widget producer and
us, who are looking to provide for our families too, we come to an
agreement. We come to an agreement that
we will give of our time for a value, that while it falls short of our overall
value of time, will be sufficient to help us achieve our goal: to provide for our families.
The thing for all of us to remember, is that accepting
something that seeks to pay us a living wage for not just our time, but improve
our skills, increase our knowledge, and improves our quality of life, is a good
thing. And if nothing else, taking on a
job responsibility that pays us less than our time is worth improves the value
of the very time for which no one can pay us.
For our efforts, we become viable members of our communities. And whenever we have free time, and invest it
into our communities, then our time increases value even more.
Our time increases value when we volunteer at our
schools. Our time increases value when
we volunteer at the playgrounds. Our
time increases value when we volunteer in our civic groups such as our
neighborhood associations.
When we are not working, or engaged in something other than
our families, our time is all the more valuable when we finally give to our
family and cherished friends. And while some
of us may have placed a dollar value on our time, to spend it with family and
friends, makes our time all the more priceless, and for that reason, no one can
ever pay us what our time is worth, and shouldn’t even try.
Thank you all for your priceless, yet precious time, and I
wish you all a great weekend, my fellow CEO’s.
You are the CEO in your life. Your decisions determine your choices for success.
Wayne D. Lewis, Sr.
Please stop by to read my entire blog at your earliest convenience:
http://thecovetedcommandment.blogspot.com/
You are the CEO in your life. Your decisions determine your choices for success.
Wayne D. Lewis, Sr.
Please stop by to read my entire blog at your earliest convenience:
http://thecovetedcommandment.blogspot.com/
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