Raymond Kasinganeti's Blog

Here is the thing about time; it is finite. Time is a perishable product. Once you lose a second, there is nothing you can do to recover it because then you would have to reverse time. And time is important; very important. As the Germans say, “Zeit bist der Geld”. Time is money.

So what do I mean by ‘recovering lost time’? I am talking strategy; big hairy and absolutely focused strategy.

You can’t recover time in the absolute sense of the word but you can definitely recover the kind of progress you could have made during that time by starting to do things right. Of course this doesn’t apply to everything. There are things, moments in time if you please that are just lost forever once you miss the opportunity. If you miss the birth of your child, there is nothing you can do to ever get that moment back. I am talking about recovering time and progress in realistic situations.

In this article I want to focus more on career, whether it be professional or entrepreneurial because that is what I write about.

So let’s do a little bit of math.

But first things first.

Losing time is a part of life

Every one of us has lost precious time in our careers, some more than others. I have lost time. According to my calculations, I am eight years behind in my career in terms of where I should be. I further analysed to see whose fault it was and realised that partly it was circumstances outside my control like decisions by my parents, national events, global events, political decisions and so on. The largest proportion however was of my own making. I am talking about a lack of clear understanding of the value of time and therefore not planning for it in proportion to its importance. By the time I woke up to the importance of time, I had already lost those eight years I am talking about!

How long does it take to recoup lost time?

Think with me for a moment. Suppose you lose one year of your career due to retrenchment, getting fired, failure of a business, sickness, etc. What is the true cost to you of this one year? Assuming that we hold all other factors constant and just concentrate on absolute time terms, we can arrive at a value for that time lost. We are going to calculate how long it will take you to catch up if you were to resume your career exactly where you left it, doing things the same way you were doing them and accomplishing exactly what you were accomplishing before you lost your career a year earlier.

I believe you get what we are trying to do. So how long would it take you to recover one year of your career which you lost?

For answers, let’s analyse the table below.

One year has 52 weeks and each week has 5 working days. That translates into 260 days before we factor in leave and holidays. Putting aside 45 days for both leave and public holidays, actual working days that you would have lost in that one year come to 215. Now we know that we work an average day of 8 hours between Monday and Friday. 215 days therefore translates to 1720 hours of lost productivity! That, I find to be scary.

Suppose after that one year you resume your career and decide to put an extra 2 hours from Monday to Friday without fail. Those extra 2 hours are obviously an average including what you might work during weekends and public holidays playing catch up.
Just how long would it take you to catch up, had you not lost your career initially? According to my calculation, 860 days! That translates to about 2 years of working for 2 hours extra everyday between Monday and Friday without fail!

So let’s extrapolate. If you lose 2 years, you are looking at about 5 years. If you lose 3 years then you are looking at 8 years of hard labour my friend. What about for me who’s lost 8 years? I am looking at 22 years of hard labour!

Years Lost 1
Weeks 52
Working Days/Week 5
Total Working Days 260

Less Leave Days 15
Less Public Holidays 30
Total Leave 45

Actual Working Days 215

Working hours/day 8
Total Working Hours 1720

Recovering the lost time 1720

Extra hours to be worked per day 2
Days to recoup 860
Years 2.4

Based on these very basic calculations and assumptions, one thing becomes very clear; time is of more importance in our careers than most of us presently realise. Now that I have your attention, I will turn my focus onto practical principles of how to recover lost time and most importantly, how to utilize your time to maximum productivity going forward.