If you are in business you are well aware of all of things you have to manage. Things such as costs, cash flow, and revenue to name a few. These go without saying. These are just as important in your personal life as well, aren’t they? Maybe you don’t call them that. Here is what you might call them. Your expenses, your account balances, and your income. No matter what you call them we all know that these are important to a businesses success as well as an individual’s success.
It goes without saying that you are well aware of the importance of the above three resources. But what about the three resources you might not be thinking about that are just as important. You might say they are even more important, because these three resources are what allow you to manage the three above even better.
Your time: Time is our most precious resource and should be our most valued. We only have so much time in a day. If we don’t manage our time, we will see it pop up in other areas of our business. If we don’t make time to focus on revenue generation, then we will see that our revenue will go down, which makes our expenses become a bigger issue.
How and where you spend your time will determine your success or failure. Whether you are a business owner, a sales rep, or work for a company. Your time and how you spend your time towards profitable activities, is what determines your business success or your company’s success.
Your energy: You could make the argument that time and energy are similar. Because where you spend your time, is where you are spending your energy.
Well, this isn’t always the case. You could zap your energy on a making a simple decision that you don’t necessarily need to be making. There is something called decision fatigue. And we as human beings have to make thousands of decisions every single day. The research shows that every single decision we have to make takes some of our energy. Causing us to fatigue. Why do you think most diets blow up in the evening. Most affairs happen after a long work day. I am not saying either of these always happen at these times. However, research shows that the longer we are awake and depending on the nature of our jobs, that our energy gets drained from all of the decisions we have to make.
Your opportunity cost: The definition of opportunity cost: the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.
Each day we all have to make decisions, hence why we have to manage the decision we make as stated above, because it can zap our energy. Secondly, we have to manage our opportunity costs. When you make a decision to invest your time and energy in one area of your business, you are deciding not to focus on another part of the business.
And there in lies the opportunity cost. When we decide to invest our capital in to a new software system, in means we won’t have the capital to invest somewhere else in our business. We might not be able to hire another employee, or outsource a function to a vendor. None of the decisions we make on a daily basis are made in a vacuum. Every single decision we make, we are in essence making two decisions.
We are making the decision “to do” this and “not do” this. So there is a cost associated with the “to do” and a cost associated with the “not do”. Whatever the decision is that we are making, we believe that whatever it is we are going “to do” is more valuable and profitable than the “not do”. However, we must realize that there is a cost associated with both of them. We just have to believe that we are making the more profitable and smart decision.
Obviously, much of this blog was written from a business perspective. However, these same rules apply to our personal lives as well. We have to mage our personal time. We have to manage our energy in our personal lives and we definitely have to manage our opportunity costs in our life. All of these decisions impact each other. None of them are made a lone.
Are you managing your resources to your full advantage?
To your success and your future.
Leave a Reply