The Value of Time is at an All-Time-High

And so high on its own supply.

The best investment has always been time, but its value is what’s skyrocketing.

I noticed it in the most subtle way. Two friends asked me to review their writing. Had this been 10 or even 5 years ago, I would have welcomed it. And honestly, I would have been excited more than just doing it as a favor. Now it feels like a favor, and I think to myself, “I don’t have the time for this.”

But the funny part is that I do. I actually do. It’s not that I don’t have the time. It’s the mental bandwidth. It’s the idea of one more idea, concept, book going through my head feels like it will overdose. Oh sure, I have plenty of time for the latest Ai news, but a good friend's deep personal work? Get it out of here!

I had to sit with that a sec. To actually think about how and why I have become such an asshole. And rather than take personal accountability, I think it’s much more entertaining for both of us if we look at the societal factors that impact our relationship (read: value) to time.

Time is Money. Money is Time.

At a basic level an investment simply means taking a resource, locking it in, and adding time.

Buy a house. Wait… Boom.

But what is the value of that time?

Well traditionally you could literally buy other people’s time. That’s called employment. You get their time, so it’s like you’ve got more to deploy. That’s called being a CEO. But now even that is changing as Ai may be selling that time. And all of the sudden we have no buyers.

Value is tied to perception.

So let’s talk about the subjective relationship to value:

One part is subjective to the individual. If you took one man back 50 years in time it might his heaven or his hell.

But then there’s the subjective to the culture itself. How do we as a society relate to time?

I would propose that due to many causes, we as a culture believe that:

1. Time is moving faster.

We all know that time moves faster every year as you get older, but there are many TikTok and Instagram videos showing people saying that it’s different this time. They say it’s moving extra fast, and I would agree.

The way everything is becoming more and more short-form, and people growing up with technology as an almost primary interface to life with constantly changing pixels. It changes the way we encode memories.

The funny part of this is that if you’re enjoying your life you really don’t care. But if you’re not then you think, “Oh shit! I don’t have much time to get my shit together!” So that means people will need help getting their shit together. Yeah, I wish I knew what I meant by that, but it’s very personal and in the shadows at this point. Try to tap into it.

2. Time is running out.

With the metacrisis and poly crisis, everything seems like it’s on fire all the time, and there’s this sense that something much bigger and much worse is coming, but that low hum of anxiety since you don’t know when. Yet I would say most people say that time span would be no more than five years.

In that sense, you kind of have two markets - Those who believe it and those who don’t. They each have very different needs.

3. I (personally) don’t have enough time.

There’s the larger timeline, and then there is my own timeline. The irony is that if I believe this, it means my entire strategy is wrong and usually includes trying to do everything at once.

The solution is prioritizing. This means saying no to things and to people (and to our own wondering desires and distractions). It all comes down to choosing, but there are so many options that it’s not easy. It’s easier to daydream about it. To chat with ChatGPT rather than real customers, readers, listeners.

So what does that mean?

Buy and Sell Time

This is the frame. For any product or service.

Can you demonstrably show that you save me 10 minutes, every week? That’s worth something. Especially if there are many of those products or services.

Can you help me make better use of the time I have?

Can you help me decide how to even use the time?

As you can see, this goes from the mere mechanical to the deeply spiritual. In fact, I would do your best to focus on those extremes - On one side, go as close to the earth and the human body, and physical things as you can. On the other side, focus on the deeply meaningful, beautiful, awe-inspiring elements of life.

That’s how we’ll keep our humanity.