I’ve turned into a fairly materialistic person after starting a family, which kinda goes against this list, but I promise I have a point.
I’ve now started valuing my time in money, quite explicitly. Let’s say an hour of my time is worth roughly 50 euros. I can make more money by doing more work, I’m not limited to 40 hours a week when feeling productive, nor am I required to fulfill 40 hours a week when I have a bad case of executive dysfunction. So any time I’m out running errands, it technically IS costing me this much money.
If I have the option to spend X hours doing something, I’m going to ask myself if it’s worth it being X * 50 euros poorer for this. Spending time with friends or family? Absolutely worth it. Going on a walk to clear my mind? Still worth it. Drive around a bunch of drunk people for money? Nope, because nobody is going to be paying me enough to make it worth my while and it’s not an activity I enjoy doing very often.
I’ll make a similar calculation for spending money to gain more free time. If I’m working on my car and something is going to take me 10 hours, but my shade-tree mechanic 3 hours @ 35 euros an hour on his lift… Yeah, I’m going to pay him and hang around while he’s doing it. I just bought 7 hours of free time (so 350 euros) for 105 euros.
That does NOT mean that when I make the calculation that I’m going to always actually use the saved time for work right away. I might just hang around at home, take the baby for a spin in the stroller, listen to podcast I enjoy… Hell, maybe I’ll take a long ass bath. This is just a way to get myself thinking “hey, my time is worth too much to be doing this”, because in the past I rarely said “No” to anyone who wanted me to do anything, and also I’d spend lots of time on anything that could save me a minuscule amount of money.
One must be careful with this kind of reasoning, because often the time is not a cost - but actually a valuable part of the experience in its own right. Walking to the corner store is slower than driving - but can be a worthwhile experience for its own sake - as it give a bit of time for quiet reflection, and light exercise, and fresh air. Depending on your tastes, a similar thing could be said about doing some maintenance work on your bike vs paying someone to do it for you.
Getting too bogged down in time vs money can potentially lead to miscalculations and stress. Is it better to give someone a quick blowjob for a bit of extra cash so that you can pay someone to vacuum your house? Perhaps the calculation is not really one-dimensional.
For me, simply spending less time thinking about money is worth quite a bit of ‘wasted’ money & time; because I value the headspace that would otherwise be consumed by that!
That’s also quite valid. And the walk to the corner store is pretty much a break to slow down and just… Think. Personally I value those breaks fairly highly too.
I’ve turned into a fairly materialistic person after starting a family, which kinda goes against this list, but I promise I have a point.
I’ve now started valuing my time in money, quite explicitly. Let’s say an hour of my time is worth roughly 50 euros. I can make more money by doing more work, I’m not limited to 40 hours a week when feeling productive, nor am I required to fulfill 40 hours a week when I have a bad case of executive dysfunction. So any time I’m out running errands, it technically IS costing me this much money.
If I have the option to spend X hours doing something, I’m going to ask myself if it’s worth it being X * 50 euros poorer for this. Spending time with friends or family? Absolutely worth it. Going on a walk to clear my mind? Still worth it. Drive around a bunch of drunk people for money? Nope, because nobody is going to be paying me enough to make it worth my while and it’s not an activity I enjoy doing very often.
I’ll make a similar calculation for spending money to gain more free time. If I’m working on my car and something is going to take me 10 hours, but my shade-tree mechanic 3 hours @ 35 euros an hour on his lift… Yeah, I’m going to pay him and hang around while he’s doing it. I just bought 7 hours of free time (so 350 euros) for 105 euros.
That does NOT mean that when I make the calculation that I’m going to always actually use the saved time for work right away. I might just hang around at home, take the baby for a spin in the stroller, listen to podcast I enjoy… Hell, maybe I’ll take a long ass bath. This is just a way to get myself thinking “hey, my time is worth too much to be doing this”, because in the past I rarely said “No” to anyone who wanted me to do anything, and also I’d spend lots of time on anything that could save me a minuscule amount of money.
One must be careful with this kind of reasoning, because often the time is not a cost - but actually a valuable part of the experience in its own right. Walking to the corner store is slower than driving - but can be a worthwhile experience for its own sake - as it give a bit of time for quiet reflection, and light exercise, and fresh air. Depending on your tastes, a similar thing could be said about doing some maintenance work on your bike vs paying someone to do it for you.
Getting too bogged down in time vs money can potentially lead to miscalculations and stress. Is it better to give someone a quick blowjob for a bit of extra cash so that you can pay someone to vacuum your house? Perhaps the calculation is not really one-dimensional.
For me, simply spending less time thinking about money is worth quite a bit of ‘wasted’ money & time; because I value the headspace that would otherwise be consumed by that!
That’s also quite valid. And the walk to the corner store is pretty much a break to slow down and just… Think. Personally I value those breaks fairly highly too.