In Las Vegas, they take away your "real money" and give you brightly colored chips to "play with." This is not a caprice on the casino operators part; it's done for a very sound psychological reason. People tend to risk more, lose more and lose more cheerfully when operating with this play money than with the form of money they deal with in everyday life.

Similarly, because minutes, quarter hours, half hours, hours and days are not dispensed in the form of money - coins and bills - it's hard for us to feel the same way about spending time as we do spending money. The same person who gets confused in a dark cocktail lounge and leaves a $50-bill as a tip when they meant to leave a $5-bill, and feels awful about doing so, will think nothing about wasting an hour waiting in line or "shooting the bull" around the water cooler.

However, the fact is that time IS money. When you waste an hour, you might as well go to the ATM machine, pull money out and then toss it directly into the little trash bin beside the cash machine with the receipt.

There is absolutely no doubt that an individual's income, career progress and other rewards are directly related to how much value they place on their time.

Below is a calculation device that will show you exactly how much money your time is worth. These calculations are based on 8-hour workdays:

The difficulty with time is that you can't really save or salvage it. Time is an elusive ghost. Unfortunately you can't bottle it up and store it in your basement for future use.

The good news is you're not the only person who can't store time on tap in their basement. The whole world is constantly being forced to shift and change with time.

Time is the ultimate equalizer. Time truly does "level the playing field" and that can be a remarkable advantage for anyone who is able to perceive time as their ally and learn to use it effectively.

You can achieve endless levels of success simply by mastering the ability to manage and prioritize your time. But before you can truly master time management you must identify and pinpoint the real time wasters in your life.

To help you identify where most of your time is being spent we've put together a time use quiz. It will help you to identify time wasters in your life and could possibly shift your perception of time.

By: Bill Brooks
(c)The Brooks Group 2004
www.brooksgroup.com

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