I recall a conversation with a colleague some years ago. His theory was that you should look at how you spend your time in terms of how much you’re paid per hour in order to help you make tradeoffs.
Let’s say that you’re paid $10 per hour, just so we have a round number. This means that your time is worth $240 per day, $1680 per week, $87,600 per year. Using this method, when you choose to sleep 8 hours a day rather than 6, you’re wasting $7300 over the course of a year. This is bogus. Yes, in a sense, time is an interchangeable commodity. If I work 40 hours a week in my job, it doesn’t so much matter which 40 hours that is. But perhaps that’s not true. If I work during the time that I might have attended my kid’s game or concert, I’ve lost something immeasurable. How could I possibly value time with my kids at $10 an hour – or at any monetary value? It’s on a different dimension. If I decide not to take a break around Christmas, there’s tradeoffs happening which are far more important than money changing hands: with my family, with my spirituality, with my own mental health. It’s absolutely true that you can’t take it with you. And the experiences you leave with your family and friends when you die are on a different dimension than any money you might leave them. I don’t mean for this to sound morbid, speaking of death and all that. This really is about how you choose to spend your life. Associating work with the money you make is reasonable, but don’t try to measure other parts of your life in terms of money. You’ll end up making bad decisions if you do. LIVE your life.
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Carl Dierschow is a Certified Small Fish Business Coach and author of the career management guide, Mondays Stink! 23 Secrets to Rediscover Delight and Fulfillment in Your Work. He is a career coach for those going through interesting transitions, and works with small business owners who need to create breakthroughs in achieving their business goals. Find out more at www.Dierschow.com and www.SmallFish.us.If you are interested in individual career coaching, group coaching, or other resources which might help you with difficult choices, please contact Carl at carl@dierschow.com.
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A very interesting blog post about the value of time. You certainly can’t put a value on certain times. Thanks Carl.
– Kristian