In Your 20s? Focus More on Time Than Moneymaking

Choose the right career while you're young enough to change your mind.

This is a guest post by Alina Jingan. If you’d also like to guest post here on JobMob, follow these guest post guidelines.

In the last couple of years I’ve met lots of young people who believed that they first need to have money as the main resource to invest in their development or ideas.

At first glance someone will agree that that’s correct, and maybe it is to a certain extent.

But the thing that concerns me is that people spend little time to think about the cost of spending all your time on making money.

Young people earn money, as everyone else, with their time. There is a constant exchange between time and money, even when you are young, because it impacts on everything.

The way we choose and do our job impacts on the way we spend our time, and the way we spend our time is the way we live our lives.

Youth is the time to learn through testing and making decisions, mainly without previous experience, but the key element is that all these experiments take time: your time.

So, here are some of my thoughts of why you should choose having more time instead of having more money in your 20s:

1) Don’t settle for less just to make more money; choose wisely, you might have no time going back and changing it.

2) Think that you need time not just to eat and sleep; you also need it to think, meditate and reflect on your past and future. The time you spend thinking about your life, your attitudes and your relationships will help you discover who you are and who you want to be. Although this self-awareness might change over time, it will help to guide you during any tough times and redirect to ‘a better you’.

3) Ask yourself the right questions and give yourself time to find the best answers. All this time will probably cost you money, but what is money without thinking?

4) You need time to think now, not later. You will get the chance to spend later and you will have opportunities to get more money, but some choices need to be made now, and you better invest some time in that process. You will thank yourself later.

5) Remember that not all of your work needs to earn you money; maybe you want to develop yourself by doing some independent studies or research or getting involved in voluntary activities.

6) When building friendships and relationships, invest your time, not your money. Focus on surrounding yourself with people that inspire you to be better; it will save you time and money.

7) You can have fun at 30 and 40 and even 80, but it is said that having fun in your 20s is just so different. Make sure you don’t miss that while you are too busy making money. Making money and having leisure at the same time sounds ideal, but for real fun you probably won’t need lots of money.

The way you choose to spend and invest your time and money will impact on your life and determine who you are.

Don’t forget, even if you are young and choose to trade more of your time for money, choose work that will add some skills, solutions, contacts in addition to the financial rewards.

Don’t assume you will have your entire life for this; my advice is to start reacting now. Just a couple of years and you will realise that you can achieve more by having more time and less money than having more money and no time at all…

About the Author

Alina Jingan has researched for the last five months the personal branding phenomenon. Her study focused on how personal branding with social media impacts young entrepreneurs' success. Alina is passionate about people, books and social media. She writes personal branding related articles at brandization.co.uk. Follow on Twitter at @alinajingan and Google+.

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