Finding Time To Make Money

Time = Money. No truer equation has ever been written. Unfortunately, that equation does not take into account the facts of real life.

In real life, inefficiencies come at us from all directions, often elongating the time side while the money side stays the same. It is up to us to squeeze more time out of the day — and a lot of different people want to tell us their secret to doing so.

There is no secret to time management.

Handwriting a list is not glamorous, but there’s a reason it has survived the digital revolution. Some people say it helps them remember the list without looking at it, while others prefer a low-tech method. Both digital and handwritten lists can be enhanced with color-coding. Removing completed items from a to-do list is both satisfying and morale-boosting.

Inbound distractions can be menacing to your productivity, but it is still possible to be cool, calm, and collected. You can develop a system to mitigate and manage specific distractions — it may be as simple as going to bed early and starting at 6 a.m. instead of 9 a.m. Those three hours of email silence might end up being your most productive.

Some places of employment have their employees account for their time every six minutes. That sounds harsh for regular employees — but heavenly for freelancers. It makes sense for freelancers to track their time with a dedicated software as opposed to a stopwatch. There’s a variety of time trackers that are available as free browser extensions.

Calendars are not just for appointments with other people. You can make appointments for yourself to time-block your whole day in advance — and you can show yourself as busy to your coworkers. Hopefully, they will take the hint and allow you to power through some work.

And clutter is a huge time killer. Even people in the most organized settings spend, on average, one year of their lives searching for misplaced items. Getting organized is a low-key way to create more time in your life.

Everything you buy gets its value from your time. It’s possible to convert the monetary value of something to the time spent to earn that money. Some people might find it helpful to imagine the cost of something in weekly staff meetings, instead of dollars. How many meetings did your last vacation cost?

Judy Heft is the CEO/founder of Judith Heft & Associates, a financial and lifestyle concierge celebrating 25 years in business helping people stay financially organized. She is a certified money coach and the author of “How to Be Smart, Successful and Organized with Your Money.” For more information, visit www.judithheft.com.