It might be in the middle of the night. I might be drunk. But I have to write this down.

Everyone of us have to obey and respect a set of constants, things in life which we cannot change or alter. Just as we have to obey the law of gravity, we only have 24 hours in every day and we all are destined to die. We can’t deny this.

But if we all have to follow the same rules in life, how come some people succeed where other people fail? How come some people are tremendously successful while others spend their lives living in poverty? We all have to follow the same rules; yet some people come out on top.

So why is this?

In life I believe there are two very important components we have to pay attention to: time and value. Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, has clearly figured out how these two measurements are related.

If we for example take the average Joe out there, we’ll probably see a few differences. The average Joe is probably employed by a company, working 40 hours or more per week. The thing that a lot of people who are employed do not really realize is the fact that they spend their time making someone else rich. Your paycheck just represents a fraction of the actual value you create for the company you’re working for. Your company reaps the benefits of your work, not YOU.

Bill on the other hand probably won’t have to work another day in his life to live a life in abundance. He probably makes more in a minute than you and I combined make in a month. So he’s clearly on to something… but what? Bill found a way to make money irregardless of the time he spends making money. So he can make a killer living by sleeping, or just lounge by the pool. So there’s clearly a principle at work here:

The money you make should have no correlation to the time you spend making them. Makes sense?

Bill might have spent a lot of hours in the beginning of Microsoft’s history without getting anything back, but that’s just the way it works. In the beginning you might create a lot of value without getting anything back - but in the long term (if the product or service is valuable) you’ll get a really good return on investment for your efforts. Eventually the return on investment you’ll get from your product or service will be non-correlated to the initial amounts of hours you spent on creating the product or service in the first place.

What you can probably tell is that I’m pretty much suggesting that (some - not all) people should aim to be self-employed, or preferably, to be a business owner. In the end, what it really comes down to is the choice between security and yield. The reason a lot of people are employed are because they enjoy the security and comfort a job brings them. The reason a lot of people start their own companies are because they’re striving for a higher yield than the yield they’ll receive from being employees. It’s just that simple.

I’m not saying that each and everyone should quit their jobs and join the entrepreneurship-bandwagon. I’m just saying that these things are worth thinking about. Some people should be employees (and happily so) and some people should go about setting up their own companies. The former enables the latter to create more value and a higher yield while the latter enables the former to enjoy a life of security. That’s the beauty of the world - we’re all different.

So to tie this all together: Time is a constant, Value is a variable. We all have 24 hours every day to spend; some people spend their 24 hours creating minimal value, some people spend their 24 hours creating amazing amounts of value. We all have to find a way to optimize the value we create during the fixed set of hours we have to our disposal.

This is far from the complete story, I just felt that I had to jot these specific thoughts down somewhere. It is truly worth thinking about, and I’ll expand more on these thoughts some other time. Good Night!