When you invest rather than consume there is a cumulative effect that can generate incredible momentum. This applies to all resources, including money, and especially time.

Contrast these fictional apple lovers.

Charlie Consumer spends a few hours each year working for a local apple farmer. In return the farmer gives him a bushel of apples. The first year he spends a few hours and gets a bushel of apples. The fifth year he spends a few hours and gets a bushel of apples. The thirtieth year he spends a few hours and gets a bushel of apples.

Ivan Investor spends a few hours each year working for the same farmer. In return the farmer gives him a young sapling apple tree that costs the same as a bushel of apples. Each year Ivan Investor plants the young apple tree he earned. The first year he spends a few hours and gets no apples. The fifth year you he spends a few hours and gets a few bushels of apples. The thirtieth year he spends a few hours and gets hundreds of bushels of apples.

(If you protest that apple trees require ongoing labor and care, note how the farmer that Charlie and Ivan worked for paid for that labor. It wasn’t with his time.)

Ivan produced this huge momentum because he invested his time in something that generated additional value over time. In this case it was tangible physical value, but it could just as easily be human, relational, or spiritual value. Generating the spare time to invest in the first year is the hardest part. (If Ivan needed to eat those apples to survive, he never would could have afforded to plant the first tree.)

Manage well to create room today to invest part of your time in things that generate additional value over time.