Time Investments

Almost everybody agrees that time is the most valuable resource. However, many people make investments in resources (assets, money) instead of doing the same with time. Let us check the most common cases when time investments are worth doing it.

Time Savings

When we are going to discuss time investments in this article, we will check time savings. We will check when spending some time initially may save significantly more time in the future.

We will not include cases when you save time at the cost of some other resource — for example, money. It is a typical resource conversion, and while it can be considered an investment to save time, it is not a time investment as the initial resource is not time.

Education and Learning

These two items are typical long-term time investments.

When you are getting an education or learning something new, you are spending a lot of time. However, every time you are using the acquired knowledge in real life, you are saving your time and returning some of the initially spent time. Considering that learning takes a long time, you need to work quite long to compensate for the initial investment.

You may speed up the returning time by teaching somebody else and delegating the work in many cases. This way, every time this person is going to use the knowledge acquired from you, it will save his time and yours as you do not need to do that work.

However, not every education or learning saves time. It may happen that you have visited some classes with outdated information or practices, and you will never use these skills in the future. You should avoid such courses as they just consume your time without giving any useful knowledge in return.

Health and Fitness

These items can be considered as both long-term and short-term time investments.

Every time you are jogging, doing yoga, or in a gym, you are spending your time. But then you will spend less time visiting hospitals, you will be less susceptible to seasonal illnesses, and you will be more productive overall. It is a short-term investment.

You may also use some tricks to save even more time, e.g., ride a bicycle instead of a car. This way, you are killing two birds with the same stone — you are still doing exercises, and you are getting to the place where you need to be in a reasonable amount of time. This trick works only for short trips, of course.

As for long-term investment — if you are doing sport or just physical exercises regularly, then you will simply live longer. So, you will have more time for whatever you want to do in the future.

Planning and Decomposition

It is another typical area of short-term time investment.

When a technical person is planning and decomposing some project, the expected outcome of these activities is a detailed plan split into tasks, phases, or iterations. This plan will not only guide people who implement it, but this plan also saves time. These people rely on the knowledge and experience of a person who did the planning and immediately start working on the implementation.

The second are when proper planning saves time is project support. A good plan includes detailed documentation. A person who supports the project will have most of the required information about the project structure, including initial architecture and implementation details.

To Do or Not To Do?

You have to ask yourself this question every time you plan to spend a lot of time doing something. Do the initial evaluation, check other people’s experience, and understand how and when you will return your time investment.

Sometimes time investment may worth it, sometimes not. Just think ahead on every opportunity and try to predict the result. Follow the logic, use your experience, and you will have a chance to save a lot of time!