Benjamin Franklin famously said that time is money, and the phrase is still quite popular today. What it means is that money is a representation of time… your employer (or client) pays you to spend some of your time doing whatever it is that they need and you do. Your friends and family also want you to spend time with them, and while that’s not exactly money, it IS value.

That sounds like it makes sense, right? Nothing unusual there… it’s commonly accepted wisdom. It also happens to be wrong.

The truth of the matter is that time is worthless. Literally… it’s worth nothing at all. What really has value, and what makes your time worth something, is attention.

I’m going to break this article into two sections: work and relationships.

Why Time Is Money Is Wrong…

At Work

Think about it… if you just showed up at your job, but did nothing at all, do you think that your employer (or clients) would want to continue to pay you? Of course not… they are paying you to give your attention to the tasks they want accomplished.

There is a base amount of attention that anyone can give to any task. Someone skilled at that task can, essentially, bring to bear attention paid to the task in the past in the current situation, thus making their time more valuable, because more attention is being given to the task… it’s just that some of that attention came beforehand. Skills that are complex require more attention for the average person to learn, which translates to bringing more attention to a task if you DO have that skill, resulting in people with complex skills being paid more than people with simpler skills… brain surgeons possess more complex skills than house painters, for example, so they get paid more.

So the basic measure of value is attention. But this isn’t just in the economic sense… attention is the basic measure of value in relationships, also., which leads us to the next section, why time is money is wrong…

In Relationships

People always claim that they need more time together, but it’s not what they really mean. I am guilty of this, too… I tell my wife I need more time with her when what I really mean is that I need more time with her where our attention is on each other (three year old children use up an awful lot of attention). We need, to put it in more familiar terms, quality time, not just quantity time.

Any relationship that you give attention to increases in value (which can also be called importance, here) to you. The person on the other end of the relationship will definitely notice any significant change in the level of attention that you give them. This can be good or bad… most people will generally appreciate an increase in attention, but too much attention in a relationship that the other person gives less importance to can start to seem creepy (as in stalker-ish).

It’s very important to remember the distinction between time and attention… time without attention has a net negative value, because you are causing the other person to invest some of their attention without getting anything in return. This is immediately evident in relationships… if you go out to dinner with someone, and the whole time they are talking on their cell phone, it’s worse than never having gone out at all.

Summary

It takes time for the value of attention to reach its maximum. That means the the value of your attention goes up as you spend more consecutive time giving something, or even moreso someone, your undivided attention. With regard to things, or tasks, you can think of this as “getting in the groove”. With regard to people, you can think of it as warming up or breaking the ice.

Becoming consciously aware of where you are spending your attention can make you much more effective. You can become more efficient as you learn to focus more of your attention on what you are currently doing. This can lead to you getting more done, being more productive, and accomplishing more of your goals.

You can also improve your relationships vast amounts by understanding the power of attention… giving someone your undivided attention, especially over a longer time, is incredibly flattering, and people WILL notice and respond to the fact that you are showing that you find them important and valuable.

So… are you aware of where you are spending your attention?