Time is not money
How do you value yours?
How much time did you give your work last year? How much money did they give you in return? Did it feel like a fair trade?
Often we’re clear about the exchange of time for money. Time is money, say CEOs obsessed with productivity. I’m not getting paid after 5pm, say the workers with good boundaries, so I’m out at 5pm. We’ll pay significant money to save time or make the time we have more enjoyable - a nice meal out rather than having to cook, a tenner on a cinema trip to fill a few hours, a more expensive direct flight rather than the cheap one that requires a four-hour stopover.
But what’s ‘worth it’ when it comes to both money and time feels individual - one person might feel that paying £70 for a cleaner is a waste of money, whereas another will view it as a bargain if that means they get an entire Saturday back to go to a farmers’ market and read a book. How much time would you need to spend building a bit of furniture before you decide that actually, the £20 ‘assembly fee’ is a good deal? And ‘worth it’ is highly changeable. Today, sure, I’ll pay £30 for a takeaway. Next week though, when it’s nearing payday, that £12 for lunch seems extortionate.
Money is supposed to have a societally agreed-upon value. Time is much more complicated. And when it comes to work, things get murky. Your early jobs were likely paid by the hour; a very clear exchange rate. You’re here for an hour fielding requests from customers, you get £16. As you move upwards, it’s rare to see how your work time is valued written out so plainly. After all, you’re no longer being paid just to be there, but for the expertise you bring, for all your skills and ideas. But have you ever worked out your hourly rate; dividing your salary by the number of working days in a year, then by the hours you work each day? Does it seem reasonable?
I’m pondering these questions because I think a lot of people are seriously undervaluing their time. Last week, the TUC published a report that 3.8 million people in the UK did unpaid overtime in 2024, putting in an average of 7.2 unpaid hours a week. That’s a full work day extra. And this is a report based only on the time people spent actually doing their work, not all the other time that’s spent - commuting, checking emails at the weekend, mentally rehearsing what you’ll say in tomorrow’s meeting when you can’t sleep.
The TUC highlights this as an issue because the overtime is unpaid. It frames the problem as UK workers putting in £31billion worth of unpaid overtime, and the TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “Most workers don’t mind putting in extra hours from time to time, but they should be paid for it.” This positioning isn’t incorrect, and I do see the value in encouraging people to think of time lost as money lost, as this might be just the nudge they need to start leaving work at 5. But my worry is this: time isn’t money. I don’t think the fix to the issues of work is simply ‘pay people for their overtime’ (although employers absolutely should, of course). I think time is far more valuable than money, and we should be treating it as such… not by getting paid for giving more of it over to work, but by reducing our time spent.
This might be stating the obvious, but I think it’s worth saying it over and over: time is a finite, limited resource for each of us. There are only so many hours in a day, only so many days in a week, only so many years that make up our lives. There are lots of slightly terrifying representations of just how little time each human actually has on earth. There’s Oliver Burkeman’s reminder that we only really get 4,000 weeks. There’s that ‘life calendar’ that goes around on Reddit, where you colour in all the weeks you’ve had and immediately feel very unsettled by how far into your allotment you are (here’s an online version where you just enter your birthday and voila, scary result).
Money, in theory, is something you can always make more of. Time is not. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. And when you dedicate time to one thing, you have to take it away from another - perhaps you gave up an hour of sleep in order to watch the new episode of Severance. Sometimes we try to ‘make time up’. Where we’ve spent in one area, we can save in another. But once the time is spent, it’s not actually something you can gain back. Time is not a thing you can build an excess of. No matter how well you manage your time, no matter how you scrimp and save, there are still only 168 hours in a week.
If you multiply your hourly wage by all the hours you have in your life, the total might feel fair enough. An hour is worth £25? Sure! But that requires agreeing with your workplace’s view of the value of your time. Once you acknowledge just how precious time is, doesn’t that value feel a bit… off? But then again… how are you valuing your non-work time? How many hours seem to be just frittered away on nothing at all? How much of your time do you waste?
There’s been a spate of time management books over the last few years, all designed to help use our time better. I haven’t spotted any that focus primarily on work, at least not with that same message of being aware of the sanctity of time and appreciating the moment. The two concepts sit with each other uncomfortably. How highly are you really valuing your time if in some instances it’s worth a wildly different amount to another? Is it right that a company can determine your time’s value? There’s something icky about these thoughts, much in the same way as managers become deeply uncomfortable when employees ask if they’ll be paid for the extra hours needed outside of the 9-5, or how we’re not supposed to talk about money at work full stop. There’s a deep discomfort with the transactional nature of it all; in interviews, you’re still not ‘allowed’ to answer the question ‘why do you want this job?’ with ‘because I need to pay my rent’. Maybe it’s just lingering taboos: it’s gauche to discuss money, and talking about time and its value is awkward because to do so is to acknowledge death.
I think if we really reckoned with these conversations, there would be some big societal and structural changes. If we all got real about the shortness of life and the limits on our time, we’d likely work a lot less (eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours that are our own – are we really comfortable handing a third right over like that?). But those kind of changes will take time and are mostly out of our control.
What is in our control is the smaller acts of respecting the value of our time. We can decide, right now, to take our limited time a bit more seriously. Some ways to do that, inside work and outside it…
Do a time audit - a session with the legend Sarah Stewart is obviously the best possible way to do this, but for free you can just track exactly how you spend your time for a week and then analyse the data you gather.
Add up just how much time you’re giving away for free. I know I just said time isn’t money, but ascribing a monetary value to your work time can help to conceptualise why overtime is a bad idea. Try calculating all the time you spend on work that isn’t paid - the half hour you stay late in the office, yes, but also the 30 minutes of your lunch break you don’t take, the 15 minutes you give up by getting in early, those evenings you spend with your laptop out while you’re watching TV - and work out just how much money you’re ‘losing’. How much would/should your employer pay you for the seven hours a week extra you’re giving them, according to your salary?
Stop ‘just’-ing. It’s just 15 minutes extra work, it’s just 10 minutes on TikTok, etc. Quit it. That time adds up! Don’t dismiss its value by ‘just’-ing.
Track your screen time. Because again, it adds up fast. Most phones have settings that let you see exactly how much time you’re spending on specific apps. Don’t ignore that data. Look it in the eye and ask whether you’re comfortable with how much time you’re dedicating to your phone.
Set limits. If you don’t create boundaries, no one else is going to do them for you. Give yourself clear limits: how many total hours at work is your maximum? How many hours do you want to spend watching TV? Unless you have an ideal limit, it’s impossible to judge when you’re spending time poorly. Suss out those limits for yourself for every category. Work-wise, the limits are already established by your working hours… so make sure you stick to them.
Memento mori. Bleak, but remind yourself that you only get one life and that the time you can spend is limited. Take your time seriously and treat it with respect. When you’re thinking about working late, ask yourself: is this really how I want to spend my one precious life? Am I happy to scribble out weeks in that life calendar for this job?
Take your lunch break and leave work on time. And don’t start working too early. Obviously.
Always think about what you’re getting in return. You give your job your time, energy, and expertise. What do you get back? Yes, money, but make sure it’s enough. And know it’s right to expect other stuff, too: fulfilment, enjoyment, skills you can use in the future, whatever. Work out what you view as a fair trade and make sure the balance stays in your favour.
I’m interested to hear about your views on time and work, and the ways in which you’re valuing your time. Please do share in the comments or email me if you have thoughts, as I’m super keen to chat about this!
Work-related reading recs:
Really enjoyed reading these stories about how people make money. Will definitely be picking up Charlie Colenutt’s book!
I wrote a big guide on how to actually delegate at work, with expertise from a lot of brilliant people, and I think you should read it.
VERY interesting piece on whether it’s a red flag if a company offers you a job you’re underqualified for.
Sorry, I know I’m biased but Stylist is nailing it recently. Here’s a feature from my colleague Lauren Geall on how the office is impacting your sleep.
And here’s one from another colleague, Amy Beecham, on ‘ambition burnout’ in the panic years.
Not a fan of the headline on this piece but a fascinating look at generational discord in the workplace.
Good first-person piece on the draining nature of endless video calls. We discovered this in the pandemic and yet the plague of back-to-back meetings persists!