My time is not money.

As an entrepreneur, I read a fair number of  business-related articles, particularly around how to balance my life and manage my time. Recently, I was scrolling through an article-finding app I use (Zite), and ran across an article with a title that included some iteration of the old adage "Time is Money." A wave of guilt and stress hit me, just reading that phrase.

(Image credit: sxc.hu user hbrinkman)

"Time is money." In  recent years as the co-owner of a small company, this adage has at times run through my brain like a nasty earworm. I know my billable rates for the various services I provide. Because that figure is burned in my brain, I slip into a habit of defining myself by that number and using it as the yardstick for whether I'm living my life as well as I should be. When I'm doing something (work-related or not), at times I find myself stressing out about the opportunity cost of that activity. Could I be using my time more efficiently? Should I be outsourcing this activity to someone else, since ideally I should be doing something that could earn me $X per hour?

I spent a few years really struggling with this. If I was playing with my kids, I'd think, "Time is money." Washing the dishes? "Time is money." Playing a game? "Time is money."

I was never operating at peak efficiency. I was never maximizing my efforts. This made me feel crazy, miserable, and like I was failing. The "time is money" philosophy might be good thinking when it comes to prioritizing my workload, but I've learned by experience that I can't apply this same thinking to my entire life.

More recently, I've started consciously shifting my thinking away from the "time is money" philosophy. Time is all I have. It's my life. Is my life built around money? I hope not! If so, I think I'm doing it wrong.

I want my life to be about loving other people as best I can. My time and energy are all I have to be able to do this.

Time is love. 

Sure, I can devote some of my time, some of my attention, some of my love, to my business.  It supports my family, and our hope is that our work brightens the world a bit in the process.

But time with my kids? Time with my husband? Making our house a warm, comfortable place to live? Going outside? Reading a book that will enrich me? Feeding my soul? Being with family? None of these activities can be properly measured using the "time is money" yardstick.

When I switch my thinking to a different kind of economic indicator - the "time is love" metric, my thinking gets clearer. When I'm measuring opportunity cost, and deciding whether I'm doing my best, I hope I can measure that impact not by the dollars I could be earning, but by the love I could be giving.