I loved the new twist that @keni just brought to that old quote “Time is money”:

Time isn’t money. It is opportunity cost. Interesting twist to the famous quote that time is money. I forget where I heard this opportunity cost version. I think that is more accurate than money. Everyone’s time doesn’t necessarily translate into money. I would argue that few percent of people’s time could be defined as money…. But everyone is experiencing opportunity cost. If you are giving your time for something, are you getting a good return on it? What is the value of the opportunity cost?

That old quote needs an update for sure! I love this new framing of it: 

time = opportunity cost

But I wonder, how quality of effort/energy comes into play in this equation. Because something can take a short amount of your time but it can drain you so much that the opportunity costs for having energy to do other things is severely lowered. We’d all encountered people/work tasks like that, didn’t we?

Borrowing from elsewhere, Tony Schwartz of The Energy Project talked about how productivity is more about energy management than time management. Ever spent one hour in full-on focused mode and finishing up most of your work for the day? Or try spending one same hour but after lunch, when the energy slump haunts…I think the output will be so much lesser comparatively. 

Time is finite, but energy can be expanded, renewed and used more efficiently. - Tony Schwartz

So, from “Time is money” to “Time is opportunity cost” to finally:

energy = opportunity cost

In other words, where and whom I choose to spend my energy on shapes my opportunity costs. Sounds about right, isn’t it?