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Why You Need to Make Time Your Currency
Time is More Valuable than Money
I’ve been self-employed my entire adult life. It took me until I was in my late thirties to learn my most important business lesson.
I can always make more money, but I can’t ever make more time. Time is infinitely more valuable than money.
For me, money is best used to buy time to spend with the people I love.
This lesson means that the amount of money I can make with a project is less important than the amount of time the project will take. As a freelancer, I trade my time for money. That means I had better be well compensated.
Viewing all of my work projects as things that either cost me time or generate free time has helped me make better business decisions and better personal decisions.
How Focusing on Time Affects My Freelancing
The first thing I figure out when I am creating a quote for a potential client is how much time the project will take. I don’t want to work more than three hours a day, five days a week, on client work. That means I have to charge a high rate. My internal billable hourly rate is set so that I can still make more than enough money working just one hour a day on client work.
