6.h 时间不一定就是金钱。

关于时间，我曾经读过一则令我印象极其深刻的比喻。我们描述一个事物的方式往往会限制我们对那个事物的了解。所以，有的时候，精巧恰当的比喻往往会仅仅因为不同的表述方法就会颠覆我们对同一事物的看法。

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20111113093541/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/456.html

Make Time Your Friend 6.h: Time Is Not Necessarily Money.

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-19 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113093541/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/456.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

About time, I once read a metaphor that made an extremely deep impression on me. The way we describe a thing often limits our understanding of that thing. So sometimes an ingenious, apt metaphor will, merely through a different way of putting it, overturn our view of the same thing.

If there were such a bank in this world, you would surely be very happy: as soon as you are born, you automatically have a VIP account opened for you by this bank. Every day, exactly 86,400 yuan, no more and no less, is automatically deposited into this VIP account. And your task is to spend all of these 86,400 yuan every day, on whatever you like. If it isn't enough, you can only grudgingly give things up—because there's nothing to be done; the bank will tell you, sorry, you'll have to wait until tomorrow to withdraw the next 86,400 yuan. If you somehow don't spend it all and some is left over, it simply becomes void—because there's nothing to be done; the bank will tell you, sorry, our bank doesn't accept deposits, and moreover cancels the balance every day. Anyway, each day there are just these 86,400 yuan in all, no more and no less.

If such a bank really existed in this world, anyone would be very happy. But in fact this bank does exist, yet many people are not happy because of it. The name of this bank is "time." Time is the only resource in this world that is fair to everyone. Everyone has only 24 hours each day, each of everyone's hours has only 60 minutes, each of everyone's minutes has only 60 seconds, 86,400 seconds per person per day in all—everyone is the same, no matter who you are.

Many people love money but don't cherish time. Perhaps it's because people find abstract things harder to perceive. Compared with time, money is much more concrete. Unlike time, money can be seen and touched. People often say time is money. Because making money always takes time. If a person could exchange each of his seconds for one unit of money, he'd be very happy—although what some people get in exchange may be US dollars, and for some it may be renminbi. Bill Gates is very happy, because from 1986 to 2005 he was in effect able to exchange each of his seconds for 36.74 US dollars. A gold-medal writer on China's "Qidian Chinese Network" (起点中文网) can reportedly earn 1.2 million renminbi in a year; converted, that means he can exchange each of his seconds for 0.038 renminbi; although that's far, far less than Bill Gates, I think he'd still be very happy. Because far more people in China would need 60 years to earn what this writer earns in one year.

Look at how much money you earned last year, and from the table below you can roughly know how much each of your seconds is worth.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Annual income | Value per second |
| 1 million yuan | 0.03170979 yuan |
| 600,000 yuan | 0.01902587 yuan |
| 200,000 yuan | 0.00634195 yuan |
| 100,000 yuan | 0.00317097 yuan |
| 80,000 yuan | 0.00253678 yuan |
| 50,000 yuan | 0.00158549 yuan |
| 30,000 yuan | 0.00095129 yuan |
| 20,000 yuan | 0.00063419 yuan |

This is a situation that inevitably produces polarization. The lower a person's income, the less he cherishes time—because his time really has no value; every second is almost negligible. The higher a person's income, the more stingy he is with his time, because each of his seconds has a definite value, and he's busy making each of his seconds more valuable, so every second is worth cherishing especially. The Gospel of Matthew says, "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." This saying seems not to apply to the time bank, because the time bank won't give one minute more or take one minute away; but considering that the value of each minute differs for each person, this saying in [Translator's note: the original writes 马太福音理, with 理 ("principle"); 里 ("in") is meant; translated by the intended sense] the Gospel of Matthew feels full of a wise and unavoidable light.

Each person's time has a different value, sometimes as different as heaven and earth. For example, your classmate finishes the experiment in only two hours and writes up the report neatly and cleanly; while you've been battling for several days and still have no clue about some parts. Newton spent his life building the foundations of classical physics, while someone spent his whole life without ever building the perpetual-motion machine he wanted; Adam Smith spent his life laying the groundwork for the vigorous development of modern economics, while another philosopher wrote countless works in his lifetime, and what they set off was the largest-scale, most failed social experiment in human history. Just as we have already seen, are seeing, or will see, there are always some people who achieve countless things in their lives, while many more people spend their whole lives, and what they get in exchange in the end may in fact be nothing more than four words—"cause of death unknown."

So time is not necessarily money. After all, not everyone has the ability to convert time into money, nor can everyone convert time into equally large sums of money. Take out paper and pen, make a list, and then ask yourself, "What price can my time actually be marked at?"—this is the most effective starting point and motivation for a person resolving to stop wasting time. Only by cherishing something can the motivation to economize arise.

In addition, a very important way of thinking we've just learned is: find ways, in your understanding, to turn abstract things into concrete things—only then can you understand abstract things better. Because you have made time concrete as money, you begin to cherish time especially, and begin to use your brain to think, "How should I use my time?" What needs noting is that the "cliché" you often heard in the past—"time is money"—in fact didn't change your attitude toward time. Because a single sentence like that is still very abstract, very unconcrete. And the metaphor in the passages above made many details concrete, and only then did you have a concrete perception. This explains why most people aren't interested in logic or mathematics: because they can't perceive what tangible, concrete benefits these intangible, abstract theories will bring them—in fact, these benefits themselves are likewise, or perhaps even more, intangible and abstract.