Two Things That Separate the Wealthy From the Non-Wealthy
By: Josef Cruz
Tags: Wealth, Mindset, Psychology, Self Improvement, Money

Two Things That Separate the Wealthy From the Non-Wealthy

The mindset of successful people is different from the norm.

Photo by Keenan Barber on Unsplash

One of the essential resources that we have is our time, yet so many of us ultimately view our time the wrong way. Time often creates an illusion that tricks us into thinking that we’re making the best use of it when in reality, we’re not.

For example, we may have a list of small jobs that we must complete, and because we allocate our time to these necessary tasks, we believe that we are spending our time wisely.

I’m a big believer that if you want to improve upon something, you should model the types of people who have the result that you want. In terms of time management, the wealthy are the people to follow. The wealthy are where they are because of the unique way they think about time and how much value they place upon it.

My Misconceptions Regarding the Rich

When I was young, I used to think rich people were mean. When I thought of rich people in their homes, I always imagined them ordering around their workers and making them work unnecessarily hard just for the hell of it. To me, rich people had cleaners, cooks, gardeners, and maids for five reasons.

Because they wanted to show how powerful they are

They enjoyed the power trips.

They like ordering poor people around.

They were snobs and didn’t know how to get their hands dirty.

They were clueless about manual labor.

I was wrong. I was wrong, but this wasn’t a healthy way to think about the wealthy, mostly if I wanted to become one in the future. I know now that the wealthy are wealthy and continue to be more wealthy because they know how to value their own time and manage themselves better than most people.

Relaxing & Producing Results

The wealthy have caught the fact that you should spend your time doing only one of two things.

Relaxing

Producing results

Each time a wealthy person thinks about doing something, they ask themselves is if the task or activity falls in either of these two categories:

Point 1 is easy to determine . It’s merely a question of asking whether they deem a particular action relaxing or not.

. It’s merely a question of asking whether they deem a particular action relaxing or not. Point 2 takes a bit more thinking, which proves the difference between how a wealthy person thinks about his time compared to others. Let’s take the example of everyday housework to explain the differences.

Everyone has to do housework. Everyone’s houses need to be cleaned. Clothes washed, dishes washed, floor washed, vacuumed — there’s no getting around it.

But if you were to think about ‘Housework’, which category does it fall into? A relaxing or B producing results? For the sake of keeping things simple, I’d say the majority of people do not enjoy housework; thus, it may not be relaxing. It’s more likely that it would be categorized in ‘Producing Results’ — everyone has to do it. Therefore when it’s completed, that’s a result.

Even for the wealthy, ‘housework’ falls into the category of producing results, the only difference is he or she will get someone else to do it. He knows that he can do this because he places a monetary amount per hour of his time. Depending on the individual, it will be different. You may think you are worth £10 an hour, or the guy sitting next to you may think he’,s worth £50 an hour — it depends on the individual.

The idea is that if a wealthy person comes across an activity that can be outsourced below his per hour value, in most cases, he will get someone else to do it, especially if it’s far below his value and given that he doesn’t enjoy doing it.

Rather than waste his time on something he doesn’t enjoy, he’ll hire somebody at a cheaper rate to produce the results for him while he makes better use of his time, such as relaxing or producing high valued products.

Instead, he could use the time to spend time with his family, relaxing, working on his business, or improving his life somehow.

Once he’s put a monetary value on his time, then he knows which jobs are worth outsourcing. If he were to put a £ 100-hour value on his time, why should he iron if he can employ somebody to do it for £5 an hour? If the grass is long, why should he use up 2 hours of his time if he can get someone to do it for £10 an hour?

With this principle in mind, he knows what jobs he should do and what jobs he should outsource. A wealthy person thinks about the best use of his time a lot. He has learned to use his time wisely and focus his time on achieving goals instead of meaningless chores somebody else could do. Don’t get me wrong, housework must be done — but if anybody can do it — get anybody to do it.

How Does This Apply To Me, I’m Not Wealthy!

Now I hear you loud and clear, but the principle discusses should open your mind about how to value your own time. Even if you’re sitting around and have time to clean your house, is this the best use of your time?

You could spend the whole of your Saturday catching up with your housework for the week but would it not be better to spend your whole Saturday on ways to achieve your dreams?

You don’t have to be rich to use your time wisely and learn to outsource work. If you’ve put a £20 value on your time, then it would be worth employing a cleaner for £5 an hour to come and do it for you. Think about it, your time is much better spent producing meaningful results. Anybody can clean, so get anybody to clean for you. Nobody can cross the things on your life’s To-do list other than you. Nobody can take action to reach your dreams apart from you.

As the economy stands now, there are plenty of opportunities to employ people at reasonable prices — it doesn’t cost much to employ someone to come in once a week to take care of your housework. I have received plenty of flyers from local people wanting to do some extra work. One was a local pair looking for a bit of extra work, and the other was from a schoolboy on holiday looking to earn a bit of pocket money on the side (could use him to wash your car).

I’m slowly getting more and more into online outsourcing. I outsource a lot of my boring and time-consuming ‘website’ work to people through Upwork. If you run an online business and need workers to do your link building, design work, writers, and virtual assistants, it’s a great place to find people like that. Doing so has done wonders to my life compared to how it was before. I used to try to do everything else myself, and now that I’ve outsourced, it’s freed up so much of my time to work on other essential things.

If you consider saving the money you have planned on that big night out and instead spend it on outsourcing your work — you’ve freed up a whole chunk of your time to relax more or focus on producing results.

I’ll repeat it there’s a reason the wealthy are wealthy, and that’s because they put a monetary value on their time. Learn to leverage your time on producing results that only you can do.

Taking time to learn or do the activities that frustrate you is something that we don’t need to busy ourselves during our life. Learning to outsource your work will do wonders for you in your life for sure. A great place to start is by putting a monetary value on your own time. Ask yourself the question — How much is your time worth?