Your one non-renewable resource

Your one non-renewable resource

For any project, the three primary resources are time, money, and people. And with any project (and in life itself) the only resource that is non-renewable is time. You can always find more money and you can always add more people, but you can never recover time spent on a project. (Yes, you can add time to a project, but that just means the project finishes later; you haven't actually renewed time.)

Why does this matter? Because time is non-renewable, you should guard it very jealously. Not only your own time but anyone else working on the project. That means only "using" someone's time when you absolutely have to.

For example, are you having a meeting to discuss the project? Will the meeting involve only sharing of information or will it involve decision-making also? If it's only information sharing, more often than not the information can be shared by memo/email. Don't get ten people in a Zoom meeting for half an hour just to talk. That's time lost forever.

And should a decision come down to adding more time or adding more expense, always choose the latter. You can always find more money (renewable) but you can't renew time.

Wes's Wednesday Wisdom Archives

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