How Valuable Is Your Time

Written on November 20, 2007 by Tezza

Tuesday’s weekly guide to Personal Finance from 4EvaYoung.com

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard

It’s pretty shocking how little value we place on time, we value the dollar, we value friendships and our cars. But we seem to happily waste away time. We’ve all wasted away days. We waste time because somehow we have it in the back of our minds that it is this enduring commodity that keeps on replenishing itself but as Paul Bowles put it “… we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

If we could only realize how valuable time is then we might not waste it so much. We’d spend every moment of it embracing life a little bit more and doing the things we value most. We’d stop squandering it on silly fights and unproductive projects.

Shona from Rich Minx made an interesting observation in her post “What’s Your Time Worth“, “I’ve moved to New York for a few months, so have naturally been doing loads of sightseeing. Much of it is on the steep side…Yesterday I went to the taping of a TV show. It was free – all they wanted from me was my applause. Not having to pay was a nice change, I thought, until I found myself queuing for two hours. I got frustrated. I’d booked online; should long queues still be necessary these days, if you’re organized and plan ahead?

I started thinking I would’ve paid to skip the queues. With those few hours back in my possession I could have done some computer work, maybe made some money. Or at least been more comfortable. I might’ve paid $50 for that time back. Does that mean my time is worth (to me) $25 an hour? It’s what I used to get paid in my day job so is that now my fixed worth, in my mind, until I get a better-paying job?”

Trent looks at this way, “If you’re trying to decide if doing some task is worth your time, calculate how much money that task is worth to you. Let’s say that you can make $12 an hour sitting on your back porch writing, but your lawn needs mowed. If you can pay the neighbor kid $10 to mow your yard, then it’s worth it – you actually earn $2 by sitting on your porch writing while the neighbor kid mows the yard. But if your time is worth only $8 an hour, then you’re better off mowing it yourself. Once I figured out my true wage, I started thinking of a lot of things in this light.”

Figuring out your true wage as Trent put it will enable you to make better decisions about what you want to do with your time. After all time once lost cannot be recovered and time squandered will never be redeemed. There is an opportunity cost to every decision you make. Maybe you currently spend 2 hours on a weekend cleaning your house instead of spending it with your children. Maybe you wake up at midday on a Sunday morning and lazily spend the rest of it glued to the TV. Imagine what you would do with your time if you knew that there was only going to be a certain number of days left of your life.

What if you realized that your time to do the things you love is more valuable then doing the things you hate. What if the cost to oustource these things was a price you would happily trade so that you could focus your time and efforts on what made you happy. Would you do it?

Maybe you spend several hours standing in line to pay bills that could be taken care off by organizing automatic online bill payments. Whatever is currently consuming your time that is not conducive to your health, wealth or relationships then figure out whether there is a better way. If you can outsource something for less than your hourly worth, why wouldn’t you?

Popularity: 6% [?]

Posted in Personal Finance