Time or Money?
It's another one of those questions that humankind has likely asked from the beginning. What is more valuable? Your time, or your money? As we get older, I have a feeling the pendulum starts swinging one way more than the other. You can always make more money, but you can't necessarily make more time.
Of course, having money often gives you a freedom to allocate more time to the things you want to do versus the things you have to do. At the end of the day though, which would you really desire more of?
I was having a conversation with my friend the other day and we were talking about work. I mentioned that I was doing some side work apart from my "9 - 5" job and he made a comment that went something like:
"isn't it nice being your own boss?".
Having not been my own boss for the better part of 20 years, I have to admit, there is something freeing about not having to take direction from someone else. Given that, you might think I readily agreed with him. In fact, I did not. I pointed out that the money is nice and being my own boss has it benefits, what I really hate about the situation is the feeling that my time is not my own.
For example, if I am working a full day at work, and I suddenly get a phone call from one of my side clients, sometimes the last thing I want to do after work is go deal with those issues. I would much rather head straight home and unwind from the day.
Sure, as my own boss I could easily schedule the service for another day (and sometimes I do), but typically when I do that, I get a nagging feeling of guilt that I am letting my customer down or not living up to the service they expect from me.
We should never have to feel guilty for wanting to take some time to ourselves and live our lives right?
Our conversation eventually led to the topic of millennial workers and how their brains just seem to be wired differently. Oddly enough, they appear to have grasped a concept that many of us have been striving for our whole lives. Through some random twist of fate, many of them have embraced the fact that time is indeed more important than the money.
It's amazing the number of people who would rather work a part time job than grind out 40+ hours every week for that paycheck. My friend has had instances where a worker needed to take a day off for an appointment.
He offered the opportunity for them to pick up those hours later in the week thinking they would want to maximize their paycheck.
They declined.
The time off was more important than the money.
As a Gen X'er this thinking absolutely confounds me and yet somewhere in the back of my mind where the 9 to 5 work ethic dogma ends, it also makes sense. It is the attitude I wish I had about life!
My wife and I were just discussing the other day the things we miss out on or the things we don't do be cause we are so committed to our jobs. Ultimately, what do our jobs give us besides that golden paycheck.
We both work in the public school system, so there is the fulfillment we get from shaping kids lives, but these days, even that is questionable. We aren't teachers, but have you heard the number of people who are leaving the teaching profession? There is a reason. Those same millennials who prioritize their personal time over their work also prioritize that personal time over their family. Given the environments some of these kids come from and the world they live in, there isn't much we can do (but that's a topic for another time).
@taskmaster4450 (and others) have talked quite a bit in the past about the great resignation.
It appears thanks to a variety of factors (one of them being Covid), not just millennials are starting to shift their priorities.
The question now is, what does a world look like where people value time more than money? Will it even work?
I guess we will find out because that seems to be the way we are heading. Are you ready?
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