When it’s used right, the phrase “Time is Money” is a useful psychological trick for putting the use of time into perspective. The cost of money is always the same and the cost of time changes on circumstance. When we can give time an exact value, we will more likely be more smart and rational when we spend it. This is important for businesses to be able to do as well as for individuals because it helps to avoid risk behavior. But, it doesn’t always hold true to reality in every situation. Understanding how and why we use this phrase can help us draw the line in the middle of valuing efficiency and forgetting that time can be valuable in ways that can not be measured.
We say “Time is Money” because money has a fixed value and time doesn’t. But, we work so often with time, we need a way to measure it. Comparing time and money makes sense because it makes it possible to measure amount produced by someone. For example, saying “Time is Money” seems to be common for managers who want more efficient work from their workers. It is assumed that when time is being wasted, or time not being used well, money is also being lost. “When Time is Money” describes the thought process that causes this. As a manager, giving a value on the time of employees is necessary. Employee time is a resource, especially when employees get paid each hour. And yet for how much work is done, time is not always worth the same amount; its value changes depending on how we use it. Money always has a fixed value, no matter on the situation around it, or on the circumstance. Therefore, talking about time as money is the easiest way to figure out how it is being spent. (Adam 94-125). It matters that time can be monitored and have a fixed value at all times because people can have a mental idea of how much money is worth, and it’s harder to regulate how much time is worth.
What are the ways people treat time and money differently? A 1993 article on decision making compares the way that people use time as a commodity compared to how people use money as a commodity. There is a very big difference. In the study, it measured the risk taking habits of students. When the possibility to lose money was at stake, the students were half and half for who would take risks and who took the safe option. When the possibility to lose time was at risk, fourteen out of seventeen students took the riskier option, the majority. The way people think about time is just different because people think of it as something that can be spent or stretched more easily. (Dube et al., 1993). Treating time and money interchangeably is about shifting mindets; people perceive time as too valuable to lose or waste, just like money. Yu-Lee's “Time is NOT Money” argues against this phrase. He states that saving time doesn’t always equal saving money. Actually, treating the two as the exact same can cause a company not to use their workers to their full potential. At the end of the day, the money is made in a company by how much they actually do or sell. These things are not measurable in time. And, it is incorrect to decide that all time wasted is time that they could have been spent working. However, saving time does create more time in which more work can be done or more product can be sold. (30-36). In this sense, time and money are directly related even though they are not the exact same thing. Time saved creates possibility for money saved. As long as this possibility is actually used and that saved time is actually spent doing more, then time can be more money. The study with undergraduates studying risk behavior shows this. It’s possible that people treat time and money differently because they are different in how they can be spent and saved. Money can be saved and gathered and the more is saved, the more value there is. Time cannot always be saved for a better moment. So time has an uncertain value and cannot be moved to something else we want, like money can be spent on something else or saved up for something else. (Dube et al. 110-119). People treat money as a more measurable means because it really is.
So, if people decide to say time is the same as money, then what is the conversion rate? The immediate response is relate time to salary. From an economic view, this helps decide “opportunity cost”, the amount of salary lost when people are doing things that they are not getting paid for work. So in a situation where time is measured by that, then the saying is true. But, to be true for every situation not just when there is salary, it also needs to be possible to make or save time the same way that it’s possible to make and save money. This is usually not the case. The article by Adam shows the way people view time and money. They have different values from the other in different situations. We see this in decision making. How important it seems to save time seems to change a lot depending on how the time would be spent doing something else.(94-125). For example, it might make sense to hire someone to drive your children to and from school in order to work more hours in the day. However, missing your son’s school play or an doctor appointment with your wife for the same hour salary would be wasteful. Even if it was the same amount of time being spent, the worth of the time is greater and so its money value is different. Even though time can still be translated to money, the amount of money its worth can be dependent on the background of the situation. There is no constant trade rate. The 2009 study, “The Time vs. Money Effect” showed that the human mind converts time spent vs. money spent into a question of experience vs. possession. The participants who were thinking about the money spent on a product when they bought it focused on the ownership of the product as an end on it’s own. The ones who focused on the time spent when they bought it thought about how much fun they had with their product. They had a deeper and satisfying association to the product (Aaker and Mogilner 278-281). This theme is shown again in 2009 study in the Journal of Happiness. Just as the study hypothesizes, people are happier when they have more leisure time, but people are the happiest when they have leisure time they can spend on activities they are interested. Women enjoyed more the leisure a little bit every day and men enjoyed more the leisure that gave them all of their freedom on days they have important events. Even though leisure time brings more enjoyment and satisfaction, the money value increases when the time is spent on good things. Also, the amount of satisfaction brought by money was different for men and women. For men, they feel more enjoyment for more money, and the more they have, the happier they are. But women only are made happier with more money when they have children. Maybe because they feel they can feel protected for taking care of the baby. (Mette et al. 113-131). This shows again that time is worth more or less dependent on how positively it would have been spent. Even different for men and women, but the overall pattern is the same. They are bonded.
It is human to put our faith in basic ideas. Saying time is money lets us treat time as though it is much more important than we ever value it. That helps us to become more efficient as people and as businesses. But it is too basic also. Time is not describable in so simple ways. Technically, money is only made when product or service is done. A little bit of time working efficiently is worth more money than a lot of time doing only a small amount. Saving time only gives the opportunity to make more money, it is not the same as more money that is for sure. But it is still the best way to keep track of how time is managed. And, the spending of time and the spending of money are not equal. Time is how we measure the moments of our lives, and as in any supply and demand, the less of the moment there is, the more valuable it is. If we tell ourselves time is money, we can become more efficient. We can learn to use all possible value of our time. But we cannot truly put a price on time.
Works Cited
Aaker, Jennifer and Mogilner, Cassie. ""The Time vs. Money Effect": Shifting Product Attitudes and Decisions through Personal Connection." Journal of Consumer Research. Vol. 36.Issue 2 (2009): 277-91. Print.
Adam, Barbara. "When Time is Money." Journal of Social & Political Theory. Issue 102 (2003): 94-125. Print.
Dubé, Laurette, Leclerc, France and Schmitt, Bernd. "Waiting Time and Decision Making: Is Time like Money?" Journal of Consumer Research. Vol. 22. Issue 1 (1995): 110-119. Print.
Yu-Lee, Reginald Tomas. "Time Is Not Money." IIE Solutions 34.6 (2002): 30. Academic Search Premier. Print.
Cover Letter
Writing through the discipline of Psychology was really challenging for me. I realized that I tend to rely on my ability to make a point by describing my own opinions and logic. Focusing less on rhetoric and more on synthesizing information was extremely difficult. Where a literary paper is more about guiding the reader through a thought process and being entertaining in the process, a Psychology paper places more importance on being bias free. In many ways, a literary paper is all about bias, particularly with argumentative or analytical essays. The writer sees something in whatever they are reviewing and discusses why their point of view is supported by the text. A Psychology paper is more about drawing conclusions from several existing articles and studies. Even stylistically it was different. The more references to a text can be made in a literary paper, the stronger a point can be. In Psychology, it is more important to try and fit more information into the paper, so I had to summarize large amounts of information without quoting or even paraphrasing small sections.
Even though this was a hard essay for me, I did feel like it was a little easier to map out my essay. Since I was mostly synthesizing information in support of my thesis, the entire structure of the essay seemed to flow intuitively. There was so much information available on my subject that it was a challenge to narrow down the information and the number of sources! Usually, it’s the other way around, working from a limited amount of text. Also, it was interesting interacting with a proverb on a research level. “Time is Money” is something I’ve heard said, but I never really developed strong opinions on it until I started researching it. I actually originally intended to write the essay from one standpoint, and after doing all of my research, I ended up taking the opposite standpoint as my thesis. This was fairly novel for me because I usually look for evidence to support my thesis instead of gathering evidence and then developing a thesis based on the evidence. Even though it was hard for me, I definitely had fun with the prompt and the style of writing.
