Life coaches and self-described efficiency experts love to craft stuff they say around the almost unquestioned “fact” that “time is money.” Ok, I get it. Really.

I was thinking the other day that most people spend time more foolishly than they do money. They willingly give up time, waste time and kill time far more readily than they give up money, waste money or burn money. What idiot in their right mind would burn a Benjamin on a whim? I wonder why it is easier to give up time than it is to give up money. After all, you can always make more money; you can’t make more time.

What if we were given a deposit book when we were born that has the balance of time we are allotted. We could look at the book anytime we wanted to see how much time is left for us to get done what we wanted to do before we die. Would that change our behavior?

For some, maybe. But for many, I don’t think it would. How many times have you said, “I have all week to get this done” and are surprised it is now Thursday and it still isn’t done “Ah, well, there is always next week.”

Everyone expects they will be given a new tomorrow. But I don’t think knowing how much time you have left would change behavior. It might just make it easier to give up quicker.