Time is Money: Burnout and Bankruptcy, Part 1 of 2

by Josh Mathews

We have all heard it said that "time is money."  If there is indeed any truth to this adage, typically attributed to Ben Franklin, then some parallels may be worth exploring. In this first of two posts I'm suggesting a few parallel struggles related to time and money respectively. Then, in part 2, I'll explore a helpful financial principle applied to time management.


Busyness and Burnout 

There are more things I need to do today than time enough to do them.

Many of us face this struggle often, if not everyday. And this situation does not apply only to those who use their time poorly, wasting much of it on frivolous things (and whether watching college basketball in March is frivolity is perhaps a debate for a different time). Even if we don't spend one minute of the day wasting time, chances are we all wish that we had more time, and that we could be more efficient with the time we do have.

I've thought about this issue often. How do I accomplish all I need to accomplish in a limited amount of time? Are there things I can do, principles I can apply, that will help me to be more efficient with my time? With several things on my plate, how do I know what to work on first? How much time do I spend on a given task when whatever time I give to one task is time I am not spending on another, perhaps equally important, task?


Bills and Bankruptcy

Whether school loans, credit cards, or rent or mortgage payments, there are certainly many people dealing with overwhelming bills and debt, especially in these economically difficult times. All kinds of obstacles foil efforts to get out from under this financial burden. For some, getting ahead financially can be a very slow and long process. Others remain stuck with apparently insurmountable financial debt, living from paycheck to paycheck and breaking even, but never able to pay down the bills that have accrued. Still others find themselves going deeper and deeper into the red, sometimes to the point of bankruptcy.

Tasks add up in a way similar to the accumulation of debt. We might have several things on our to do list and at certain times it might seem like we are far into the red on the budget of time we have available to allot to those tasks. As with money, we can find ourselves either making slow progress to get ahead, stuck in a constant state of being behind, rushed, and unable to do anything as well as we would like, or getting further and further swamped with responsibilities, sometimes to the point of burnout.

Let's say I've made a plausible case for the analogy between the "debts" of time and money. In Part 2 I will apply one particular finance management principle to the struggle of time management.