Gambling with time for profit and fun

- In my time management courses I encourage people to focus their time on activities that are most valuable, activities that are worth the most per hour. However what if you're engaged in an activity where you have no real idea what the value per hour is? Maybe you're working on some new innovation for your company that's never been tried before. Or perhaps you're trying to start a hobby business that might become its own career. How much time should you spend on things like that? I say the time isn't necessarily money but it behaves like money.

Many of the lessons that we can learn from money also apply to time. In the example that I'm using we're essentially gambling with time, we're investing a certain amount of time and we are uncertain of what the return on this investment will be. Now, I'm not personally a fan of gambling nor I participate in it, but if I were to gamble I would not take every single dollar from every one of my bank accounts and investments and gamble it all on one roll of the dice, that would be foolish and irresponsible.

However I might say you know what, I'm comfortable with losing $50 and gamble with the $50. Why? Because I am prepared to lose that amount. Similarly when it comes to your time you want to ask yourself the question, "What amount of time am I willing to lose?" Call this the Las Vegas principle of time management. Look at the available time that you have in the week, then ask if I invested five hours a week for the next year and got nothing back for this amount of time would I be willing to lose that amount of time? Find a number that is comfortable and responsible for you in relation to all your other responsibilities.

Then make a conscious investment into that opportunity in this way you are able to pursue something that is exciting to you and has some risk associated with it, but you can do so without putting yourself in a dangerous position. In this case with time management. So ask yourself, "Is there something that I'm pursuing "that may not pay off in terms of money and time?" Then ask yourself how much time you can responsibly afford to lose to invest into that thing? Then use the Las Vegas principle to invest time into the opportunity, and may the odds be ever in your favor.