But before you answer that question, let me tell you a story about my friend…
His name is Smith (not his real name) he works for a huge Palm Oil
and Natural Gas processing company (go figure). His Oil and Gas company
pays him a good salary, with benefits and all. But he is stressed out!
Here’s why…He lives in Lekki but works on the Island, so everyday he has to pull himself out of bed at 5:30 am shower, dress up and then get in his car at about 6:15 am only to sit in traffic for another 60 minutes before he gets to his work at about 7:15 am.
And when work is over he faces the same traffic wahala. You know the Lagos traffic, that stressful traffic that makes you want to slap a car!
Well that stress has gotten to him. And he wants to quit his job and return back to America…so I asked him “why don’t you just get a driver?”
Now this is where I
Remember my friend works in the Palm Oil and Cooking Gas industry and is paid well. A driver in Lagos would cost him about N30,000 to N50,000 per month depending on the drivers negotiations skills. At that amount his bank account won’t even know when a payment is made to driver, it won’t feel it … the amount is too small for his account to be bothered.
With a driver all my friend needs to do is jump into an already washed car, with the AC already cold and get chauffeured to and from work. He can choose to sleep during this time, make some phone calls, buy gala, call his mum, buy pure water, sleep again … but you get my point … he can do whatever he wants. His stress level will reduce because he no longer has to worry about slapping cars, his driver can do that work for him.
But here’s what my friend said when I offered my suggestion. And his response is key because this is the mentality a lot of people have. I call it the scarcity mentality. My friend said…and I quote f…
“I can’t afford to pay a driver 30,000 Naira to drop me off at work and bring me back, what will he be doing in between?”
Let’s forget the fact that “in between” your driver, can help you pick up food, run errands, buy diesel for generator, queue up for you in fuel scarcity … let’s forget all that and instead assume the driver does nothing “in between.”
That basically the driver drops him off at 7:00 am in the morning and does absolutely NOTHING all afternoon until 5:00 pm when he drops my friend off at home. My question to my friend and to others out there with that thinking is … so what!
Let’s assume you stay in traffic 2 hours a day….5 working days a week (I have not even included weekends). That is 40 hours a month stuck in traffic! Imagine then that you are paying a driver, a very experienced driver N40,000 Naira a month. That amounts to N1,000 for an hour of your life back (N40,000 divided by 40 hours).
But yet my friend like many others see money from a simplistic point of view. They are more concerned with what the driver is doing in his stand-by time than the value the driver is adding to them hourly. Failing to realize that in that hour they can add more than N1000.00 of value to their life!
They can close business deals, finish up past due tasks, rest and basically be less stressed.
Think about it like this, instead of spending energy cursing at Lagos drivers that you will never see again in your life, you can instead spend that time closing business deals worth a couple thousand of dollars. But many fail to see or understand this because they still don’t know the value of their time.
So I ask again, do you know what the value of 1 hour of your time is?
Dis guy has some story to tell
ReplyDeleteI came across the blog and since then I couldn't help but keep.on reading
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