If you work ridiculous hours and have no time to actually have a life then you are doing it all wrong!

Time is more important than money! There I’ve said it.

The whole idea is that you work to live and not live to work but somewhere down the line a lot of us get this concept all mixed up. It’s like one of those catch 22 situations where you initially take a job to enable you to earn more money and thus lead a better life, but it becomes a never ending pursuit of more money and a promise that one day you will cut back the hours. So you end up basing your life around work and the whole plan has flipped 180!

It’s not right is it? Okay you may need the money to support a family or you may work in a profession that requires long hours with little time off, but there are always ways to increase your earnings without compromising your life. The first step is to actually realise that a change needs to be made.

So I am going to show you 5 reasons why time is more important than money.

1. We only have a limited time on this planet so make it count

There are various theories that with the advances in science and medicine many of us will live past the age of 200, and possibly a lot longer than that. Age reversal, stem cell technology and the curing of various diseases are just some of the ways this will be possible, but so far all of this is still in the development stage.

We can’t expect to solely rely on the idea that we will always be here. Most of us see death as a taboo subject and we naively believe that we will be around forever, but we should be living our lives as if there is a time limit.

That timer is counting down and we have no idea when it reaches zero, so why are we wasting most of our time doing the things we don’t want?

2. When you look back on your life, you never wish for a bigger bank balance

Think of your life like a book that is being written and will be published when your time is up. I’m fairly sure that you can’t fill up a book with your bank balance so what else is there?

Each chapter of this book should be focused on a different aspect of your life and to enable this to happen, your life should be as varied and eventful as possible. Spending countless hours every week for years on end working yourself into the ground will not make a very good book, not unless you are making a difference with your job and/or money.

When people look back on their lives they never wish they could have spent more time in the office so take note of this now and do something about it.

3. There is no point having money if you have no time to spend it

There are many people out there who just love to hoard money away in the hope that one day they will eventually have enough to retire. These hoarders actually have a scarcity mind-set and are afraid of losing their hard earned cash. The truth is, no amount of money will ever be enough for them and they see their increasing bank balance as a barometer of their success.

It would be unfair to call these people ‘tight’ as a refusal to spend money can also be attributed to a lack of hobbies or social life. It’s certainly easier to spend 70 hours a week in the office if you feel like you have nothing fun to do outside of work.

The solution to this is quite obvious. The more we have going on in our private lives, the less time we will allow work to take from us.

4. Those who have time want money, and those who have money want time

You know the funny thing is that most people want what they can’t have and this is usually true across both ends of the time/money spectrum. Those who are unemployed or have low incomes will strive for more hours or a better paid job while those who are on six figure salaries often moan that they have no time to spend with their friends and family.

Neither of these is desirable and both will ultimately cause unhappiness in your life so the trick is to find a happy medium which leads me to my next point.

5. A healthier balance leads to a healthier life

It’s almost like a cruel paradox. You can have all this free time but no actual money to do anything worthwhile or you can have all this money but no free time to do the things you want. The trick is to find a balance and earn enough money without sacrificing all of your free time.

Easier said than done I admit but if you find yourself out of sync with your work and amount of free time then you should try to find ways of addressing this imbalance in your life.

Remember we only work x hours a week because that is the amount that society arbitrarily places upon us all. This amount isn’t set in stone and it is up to us to decide what we do with our lives.

If you are in a position where you have little choice but to work a lot of overtime or you don’t have the resources to free up a lot of your life, just take the opportunity to have some ‘you’ time. Keep your weekends free or have one or two evenings a week where you have the chance to do whatever you want.

Take that class, have that night out, practice that hobby, have a weekend away, spend time with your friends/family/partner. Whatever it is that you daydream about at work, make some time during the week to focus on that and I promise you that you will be far happier and less stressed.

So let me know, is time more important than money or is it the other way around?