This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.

Most people around us value their money a lot and their time very little. And that’s the number one symptom of poverty. And mediocrity.

Time is your biggest asset. And what’s crazy, you can’t buy more time.

What does that even mean?

According to Warren Buffett, the only thing you can’t buy more of is is time. Time is the only thing in life you can’t get more than what you already get.

And yet, this is what we take for granted the most.

Imagine I gave you 1 crore rupees. Right into your bank account. Very nice, right?

But there is a condition. This is the only money you will ever earn or get. You can get no more money. No more earning. You have to live with this money for the rest of your life!

I bet you will spend every penny very carefully. You will only spend on what is really important to you and never waste anything. Not a dime will be spent without planning and research.

The time we have is just like that. It is our most precious resource. We have a finite amount of time, though we do not know exactly how much we have. Yet we often spend it like it’s worth nothing!

Most people do not associate any value with their time. They behave as if time is free. That’s just insane. Time is not free. You have very little of it. Just because you are not buying it from a shop does not mean it is free!

It is certainly not something we can afford to spend on things we don’t care about.

You can earn more and more money. If you run out of money you can still earn more. But no matter what you do, you cannot earn more time.

It is possible to earn so much money that you can’t spend all of it in your lifetime. So people have to write wills about what will happen to their money once they die.

Is that true for time?

Absolutely not. Nobody can say at the time of death: hey I have all this time left that I want to give to others now.

The entire game of being successful is about how you spend your time. And the trick is to start early, and save time whenever you can.

However, people do the exact opposite. They start every job with the assumption that they have a lot of time.

The Buddha said “the biggest illusion is that we have time.”

People who succeed are the people who can look beyond this illusion. They understand the value of time. And therefore, people like Warren Buffet, like to buy their time back. What does that mean?

Buying time back is paying someone so that you can free up your time.

So let’s assume that you earn 1 lakh per month. You wish to reach 5 lakhs per month in the next 2 years. Will you do your own dishes, wash your clothes and clean your house if you can find someone to do all that for INR 10,000 per month?

If you don’t value your time, you might. You might even waste many hours trying to find someone who will do it for Rs. 8000 so you can save 2000.

You might even argue with the auto driver about the fare for 2 minutes to save 20 rupees. Or wait for another auto for 5 minutes to save even 50 rupees.

But those maths don’t work out. You are valuing money more than time. Even when you can spend that time to earn a lot more than what you are spending!

Chores are easy examples. But there are a lot more. How about time spent on thumbing through instagram, twitter and facebook? It is a different thing if you are using these platforms with specific objectives, with a purpose. But most people use these like zombies, to see what others are doing, or just to feel less lonely!

What about time wasted with people we should give a wide berth to? What about time spent on worrying about the judgment of others, or trying to please people who always take and give nothing back?

If you are spending time on anything, the cardinal question is, are you getting value out of it?

You will absolutely not spend money on something from which you do not get value.Why do you then spend time on things from which you get no value? Why would you give time to people who are not worth your time?

Remember, you can get more money, but you are not going to get more time.

Also, time is your biggest asset. Earlier you start, the better. If you save 10,000 per month and put in mutual funds that grow 18% year on year for 30 years, you will end up with 10 Cr. If you did that for 20 years, you will end up with 1.8 Cr. If you did that for just 10 years, you will end up with only a puny 30 lakhs.

Can you afford to start late? If you start saving in your 40s, like most Indians do, what will you do with 10 Cr in your 70s, even if you were able to get there? What if you started in your 20s instead, like I did?

In my 20s, I did not focus on buying expensive cars, travelling the world, buying gadgets like most of my peers did. I quit my job, started a couple of businesses, learnt skills that can help me to grow my business, such as marketing and sales, set out to be the best at what I do, and learned to live very cheap.

I learned about investment, read books, learned meditation, martial arts, watched TED videos and kept doing my work. And then one day I was invited to give a TEDx talk, while I was still in my 20s.

I had to learn to manage an organization of 30 people and pay salaries even before I turned 30, and that was the best education I could hope for. If it failed, it was on me. It succeeded because everyone did their part.

And that’s how I learned the value of time. My only regret is that I did not start doing things earlier.  Why did I not invest everything I could in personal growth even earlier? Why did I not start investing right from the day I started earning? Why did I not invest more in my organization’s growth even earlier?

Money comes when you do the right things, it is the last of our problems. We just got to grow. And we need to start as early as possible. The difficult thing is to know what are the right things to do early enough, while time is still on your side. That is the biggest advantage in the world.

Young people think that they are young and should enjoy, and that there is a lot of time ahead to do sensible things. What a waste. The number one reason people would stay poor is because of this attitude they carry when they are young. The number of people who will not succeed to achieve their natural genetic potential is insane, only because they make the mistake of thinking they have time to do the right things later, and by the time they wake up, it is already quite late.

It is not too late though. It is never too late. You may have a time disadvantage if you start late, but the game is not over. It is just that you now need to pay a higher price, and work harder for the same results. The later you start, harder the game gets.

So if you are not ready to give up already, get started on whatever it is that your game is, because now is the next best time to start. The best was last year.

Who buys our courses? I know that these are the rare people who value their time more than their money! They want the RoI, and they know that to get the same results without our courses, it would be a far longer and twisted route.

What the average lawyer learns in litigation chambers or a law firm in 2-3 years, we teach in a 1 year course. Sure, it costs almost INR 30,000, but what is the value of the saved time? What is the price of getting ahead of peers and building high momentum early in your career? What is the price of being able to pick up a new area of law for an already established lawyer looking to expand his or her practice even further afield?

INR 30,000 is nothing compared to the saved time and energy. Or the joy of getting a PPO. Or being empowered to handle your own clients without having to spend years being an apprentice or going through hundreds of trial and error incidents, being shouted at and facing ignominy, as most lawyers routinely have to.

Everything we teach at LawSikho can be learnt by anyone on their own. At least hypothetically. But how long will it take? How much extra effort will be needed? How will you find the teachers or the mentors who will teach you these things for free, or at an even lesser cost?

Just go through the learning objectives of a course. Any course, on lawsikho.com. You will see that all the objectives are about learning how to do tasks that actual clients will pay good money to do.

Do you want to learn them? Do you need to learn them? If yes, what is the way to learn them best in the least time?

Let’s say you want to learn these without taking our course. I will tell you how you can do it.

Find a mentor who is willing to spend at least 5 hours per week with you. He has to plan your training and teach you hands on how to draft, how to strategize various things and allow you to work on real life matters with him.

Or find a long term internship – for a year or two where a lawyer will show you the ropes in exchange of your free labour.

Both I sense would be more expensive than our course if not in absolute price you pay but the sheer opportunity cost of your time.

But yes, even after all that you just might then learn as much as someone who will properly pursue a LawSikho.com course. I am not saying everyone who buys a course will succeed. Remember that the concerned person has to spend 8-10 hours a week on the course to successfully complete it.

However, you will find it hard to compete with those who complete our courses with commitment and passion, in terms of knowledge, skills and strategy even if you put in a lot of time, energy and effort sans these courses.

A lot of you will still save your 30,000 and rather try to make it on your own somehow. If you truly do not have access to that money, that is fine. We put in tons of free content for you every single week. Make the best of it.

But what about those who have the money and still try to hack it somehow instead of relying on a systematic program?

That is why I want you to fully appreciate the value of time over money.

Look, if you do not think the LawSikho courses can help you, then no problem. You are right. We wish you all the best.

But if you understand the value these courses can bring to you, and you are still not doing anything about it because you value your money more than your time, that’s just sad. Please stop and ask yourself. Is this what you should be doing? Is this the right decision?

I promise you, it will take you years to learn things that we teach to our students in months. Save those years. You will need them to grow big. Do not spend them to learn the basics!

Here are some courses that we are taking enrollment into, so hurry up

Diploma

Diploma in Companies Act, Corporate Governance and SEBI Regulations 

Executive Certificate Courses

Certificate Course in Arbitration: Strategy, Procedure and Drafting

Certificate Course in Real Estate Laws