Success on Your Own Terms:
Time, Money, Camels and the Necessity of a Microwave
by Barry Maher
Mary Ann Halpin and her husband Joe Croyle used to run a
photo studio in downtown L.A., working 10 hours a day, six days a week. Even so,
the overhead was so high, it was a constant struggle to pay the rent. Nowadays
they work out of their home, 4 days a week, and spend the rest of their time
relaxing and enjoying life.
Tactic:
Figure out what you net for an hour's work. Then figure out how many hours that
new suit or blouse or SUV would cost you. If you get that much enjoyment out of
it, great. If not, maybe you'd rather have the hours instead. And maybe you can
find a way to get those hours back: either now or a few years down the road.
Thanks to the wonder of compounding, a penny saved can soon be a lot more than a
penny earned. What's the secret of The Millionaire Next Door? According
to the authors of that book, it's lifestyle. Not self denial, just not wasting
money any more than you should waste time.
The
average family has gotten smaller in the last 50 years but the average new home
has doubled in size. And it's filled with a lot more stuff.
Tip: We
keep hearing that time is money. Time is far more than money. "It's more
valuable than platinum and more perishable than a sunset," is the flowery
way a former professor of mine used to put it. But the money we spend is—in a very real sense—time. And that money, as Emerson noted, is
often far too expensive.
The Motivation of Necessities
In
our society, luxuries quickly turn themselves into necessities, wants into
needs. We rail against materialism to our children at the same time that we
teach them that shopping—buying for the sake of buying—is a hobby, a leisure pursuit.
In a recent
study, 71 percent of Americans saw TV as a necessity in their lives, 40 percent
thought microwaves were, over 25 percent listed answering machines, TV
remote control, VCRs, computers and basic cable TV. About one in six said a second
TV was a necessity. These people were serious. The more affluent among us of
course are the most needy, most likely to have the most clutter crammed into the
necessity level of their hierarchy of needs. For example, 56 percent of those
making over $50,000 per year believed they couldn't survive without credit
cards.
A
much better book than any I've written is the source of the observation that
it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich
person to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Of course, it didn't say it couldn't be
done. We're an extremely wealthy country. Still, maybe too many of us spend too
much of our time trying to cram some really big camels through some very small
needles.
Oscar winner Rod Steiger said that to him success meant having control over the
time in his life. "A shoemaker who owns his own shop and gets up one
morning and says, I'm not working—that's a successful guy."
Barry Maher speaks, consults and writes on increasing productivity AND job
satisfaction, as well as motivation, management and sales. His book, Filling
the Glass: The Skeptic's Guide to Positive Thinking in Business was cited by
Today's Librarian magazine as "[One of] The Seven Essential Popular
Business Books."
©
Copyright 2004,
Barry Maher, Barry Maher & Associates, Las Vegas, Nevada
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Maher to speak at your next event.
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