I was revising working capital management recently when something completely unrelated to finance crossed my mind.
My schedule.
At the moment, I have a full-time job. I’m studying for ACCA. I’ve just started building my publication, I want to exercise regularly and stay healthy. I want to spend more time with my partner, family and friends. I want to travel, and occasionally have a weekend where I’m not trying to achieve anything at all.
There are a lot of things I want to do. The problem is that my capacity hasn’t magically increased just because my ambitions have. I still have the same 24 hours in a day.
And while studying working capital management, I started wondering whether the problem I’m trying to solve in my own life isn’t all that different from the problem a business is trying to solve with its working capital.
A Business Can’t Maximise Everything
One of the things that finally clicked for me about working capital is that there isn’t necessarily one perfect answer.
Imagine you’re running a business that sells physical products.
You want enough inventory so that when customers place an order, you can actually deliver it. If a customer wants 1,000 units tomorrow and you only have 500, you may lose the remaining sale or, worse, the customer.
You probably also want to offer reasonable credit terms. If every competitor allows customers to pay in 60 days and you insist on being paid immediately, you might make yourself less attractive to potential customers.
So perhaps the answer is simple.
Keep more inventory. Offer longer credit terms. Problem solved.
Except now you’ve created another problem.
The more money you have tied up in inventory, the less you have available to use elsewhere. The longer customers take to pay you, the longer your money sits in receivables instead of your bank account.
Meanwhile, your own obligations haven’t disappeared. Suppliers still need to be paid. Employees still expect their salaries. The rent is still due.
Suddenly, the question isn’t simply, “How can I sell more?”
It’s also, “How much of my resources can I afford to have tied up while still keeping the business running?”
Let’s say I keep an extra €50,000 of inventory purely “just in case.”
That might make me feel safer. But that same €50,000 could have bought a new machine that improves production. It could have funded a new product. It could have been invested somewhere that generates a higher return.
The inventory wasn’t free. Even if I eventually sell every unit, there is still a cost to having that money sitting there instead of doing something else.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised I was facing a surprisingly similar problem.
Not with inventory.
But with my own life.
Maybe Time Has an Opportunity Cost Too
I’ve been trying to figure out how to fit everything I care about into one week.
How many hours should I study? How much time does my publication need if I genuinely want to build it into something? How often should I exercise? When do I see my friends?
And somewhere in all of this, when exactly am I supposed to do absolutely nothing?
My first instinct is usually to look at everything that’s important and simply give it more time.
If studying is important, study more. If I want my publication to grow, work on it more. If exercise is good for me, exercise more. If relationships matter, make more plans.
Individually, every decision makes sense.
Collectively, they might not.
Because just like a business, I have limited resources. Those resources aren’t only hours in a calendar. They’re also energy, attention and mental capacity.
Every extra hour I invest in one thing is an hour I’m choosing not to invest somewhere else.
What If the Goal Isn’t to Maximise?
Last week, while trying to arrange my weekly schedule, I found myself considering whether I should just keep 3 workout sessions a week instead of four.
Somehow, it felt like I was doing less.
But what if a few good sessions are already enough to achieve what I actually want from exercise?
Adding more might make me slightly fitter. But those extra hours have to come from somewhere.
Maybe they come from studying. Maybe they come from my publication. Maybe they come from sleep.
Or perhaps I somehow fit everything in, but become so tired that I can’t do any of it particularly well.
An extra workout isn’t just an extra workout. It also has an opportunity cost.
And that made me realise something.
The right question isn’t, “What’s the maximum amount of time I can spend studying?”
It’s, “How much time do I need to study well and achieve the result I’m aiming for?”
Not, “How often could I exercise if I really pushed myself?”
But, “How much exercise do I need to stay healthy, strong and fit?”
Those are very different questions.
The Risk of Having No Buffer
There’s another reason I think this matters.
If I plan every hour of my week and allocate every bit of energy I have, my schedule might look incredibly efficient. On paper.
But then work becomes unusually demanding. Maybe I haven’t slept well for a few nights. Or maybe I simply wake up exhausted.
If I’ve already committed everything I have, there’s nowhere for that disruption to go. Eventually, the very schedule I designed to help me achieve everything starts making it harder to achieve anything.
Personal capacity needs liquidity too.
Maybe we need some resources that aren’t permanently committed. Some time that hasn’t already been promised. Some energy that isn’t being used at maximum capacity every single day.
Some sort of buffer.
Of course, too much of it probably isn’t ideal either. If I protect my time and energy so carefully that I never take on anything difficult, I might be comfortable. But I might also never build the things I keep saying I want to build.
Which brings me back to exactly the same problem businesses face.
Deciding what is enough.
Maybe Efficiency Isn’t About Doing More
I used to think managing my time efficiently meant finding ways to fit more things into it. Now I’m starting to wonder if that’s the wrong way to think about it.
Maybe efficiency is about understanding what I’m trying to achieve, deciding how much of my limited resources each part of my life actually needs, and accepting that investing more in one thing means having less available for something else.
Companies make these decisions every day. They can’t keep unlimited inventory, offer unlimited credit and invest every available euro into growth at the same time.
Neither can we.
The goal isn’t to maximise everything.
Maybe it’s to invest enough in the things that matter, leave enough capacity to keep ourselves functioning, and make deliberate choices about where the rest can create the most value.
I’m still figuring out what “enough” looks like for me.
But for the first time, I’m wondering whether managing my schedule is less about finding more hours and more about deciding what the hours I already have are actually worth.
