What’s an hour of your time worth?
We all get the same amount of time in a day, no matter who you are. We have chosen to use them differently, which usually separates those that achieve a level of success from those that don’t. In this exercise we’ll Identify how much time it takes you to complete your daily commitments to help illustrate where your time goes.
How much is one hour of your time worth? Even if you haven’t explicitly answered this question, your behavior every day implies some conversion rate between time and money. And for most people, that conversion rate drastically overvalues money and undervalues time.
Time and money are very different. Time is irreplaceable. Money can be accumulated into massive piles and spent whenever you choose, but your stockpile of time is being depleted at a rate of one day per day. You can always make more money, but you can never get back time. And it’s easy to trade time for money but very hard to do the reverse. So we should have a bias toward favoring time over money.
We guard against the loss of money, but not against the loss of time, as if the inevitability of time passing makes it worth less rather than more. We say time is precious but we don’t treat it that way. Be very careful about selling your time for money in a job you don’t enjoy and aren’t learning from. If you’re working at a job you wouldn’t do if you weren’t being paid to do it, you are selling a part of yourself. Is your price high enough?
Time Tip One (Know Your Rate)
Determine your true hourly rate. If you are an hourly employee the work has been done for you. You may be saying I’m worth more than that, my response would be to prove it. If you are a salaried worker just divide you annual salary by 52 and divide you answer by 40 to get your hourly rate.
Time Tip Two (Practice Time Over Money)
Think about your your time in terms of dollars, we all get 86,400 seconds in each day, would you sit and let it fly out of the window.
Time Tip Three (Determine if it’s worth it)
Before a large purchase, convert its cost into the time it took you to earn the money to make sure the price isn’t too steep.
Time Tip Four (Know what you would accept)
What is the smallest amount of money you would accept to be one year older? We give away our time daily for things we get no true value from. Identify the activities that don’t bring value to your life and eliminate them.
Time Tip Five (Track Your 24)
Make a list of where you spend your time. from the moment you wake up until you are going to bed at night, but also count the number of hours you sleep to get a total 24 hour count. This will help you see where you’re spending your time and could you be using it better.
The idea is that instead of doing things that add no value to your life you could spend your time doing something that would add value to your life such as earning your hourly rate or engaged in activities that have the potential to make you better or put you n a better position.
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