My most valuable investment

If you have read my other posts, you know I am in a reflective mood. My last post talked about a few circumstances that have influenced my thinking and my post today is more similar. Here goes.

People talk about their investments all of the time. Risky investors talk about funds, stocks, or other enterprises they pour resources into. Others talk about CDs or other more conservative ways of increasing wealth. Others may use the coffee can in the backyard philosophy (one I would not endorse).

I think my most valuable investment is my time. Each of us has only 24 hours in a day, but the challenge we have is not knowing how many days we have to work with. The average male in the USA may live 78 years, meaning he has roughly 28,290 days or 678,960 hours to invest his time and efforts into. Considering that many of us sleep 8 hours per day and then work 8 hours per day, we end up with 75, 440 hours to invest in our lifetime. I would then eliminate another 18 years of those 8 hours because we don’t make our own independent decisions and that leaves me with roughly 175,000 hours to invest in my life. That seems like a lot of time, but it really is not.

I have made choices in my life regarding whether to spend that time with my family, and my friends, at the YMCA, attending baseball games, attending church, or many other choices. There are times when we have to succumb to the wishes of others in which we spend our time. When you get to the bottom line, we don’t have that much time. That is why you need to give significant thought to where you are investing yourself and your talents.

Consider this: If you ever conducted a time audit, would you be happy with the results? As you reflect, are you happy with where you have invested your time? I know that I check my portfolio to see how my investments do, but I rarely spend time auditing the impact of my time investment.

As I come closer to the finishing line I want to finish well and spend my time where it will make a longer lasting impact. I’ll talk more about that in my next post.

Where will you spend your time?