Extra Time (Time Series Part 2)

This week I’m going to write a 4-part series on “time” where I tackle the concept from different perspectives.

In Part 1, I discuss how Time Makes No Sense.

Here’s Part 2.

Let’s do a thought exercise.

How much is extra time for yourself worth versus the time you already have?

Let’s do the math on this.

How much are you willing to pay to have more hours in your week?

Take a moment and really try to price this out.

Try to come up with a realistic number in terms of dollars that you would give to have an extra hour a day based on what you could actually pay from your income right now. Think of it as a bill you’d need to pay each month. Come up with a monthly number and divide that by 30 (days in the week).

So if you were willing and able to pay an extra $100 a month for this bill, you’d be saying that each extra hour a day for yourself is worth about $3 (100 divided by 30).

If you were willing and able to pay an extra $1500 a month for this bill, you’d be saying that each extra hour a day would be worth about $50 a day to you (1500 divided by 30).

Make sense?

Calculate your number (or estimate it from above).

I’ll wait.

Got your number, yet?

Good. Let’s continue.

There are 168 hours in a week (24 x 7).

Most people spend about a third to a quarter of their time sleeping. Let’s split the difference and say you sleep on average 7 hours a night. That means in any given week, you spend about 49 hours sleeping.

You now have 119 hours left in your week.

Let’s say you spend another 3 hours each day on daily activities like showering, grooming, brushing teeth, getting dressed, cooking, cleaning, and eating food, etc. That’s another 21 hours (7 x 3) out of your week.

You now have 98 hours left in your week.

You work full-time? Let’s be generous and assume you only work 40 hours exactly and your commute is 30 minutes each way (outside of the pandemic). That’s 47 hours a week (40 + [0.5 x 2 x 7]).

You now have 51 hours left in your week.

Lastly, let’s assume that you give 2 hours a day on average to all of the other people in your life that you care about like your partner or romantic interest(s), children, friends, family, etc. That’s another 14 hours (7 x 2) a week.

You are now left with 37 hours in your week for yourself (or about 5 hours a day). What is this actually worth? How are you spending it?

You can actually price what these hours are worth based on your current income or you can use an aspirational number (e.g. Naval prices his time at $5000 an hour).

Price these hours for yourself.

Your number can be as high as you want it to be, but it cannot be less than your current yearly income for this exercise because you have already explicitly priced your time at that rate.

For those of you who are not into math, use $100 for your hourly price to keep it simple.

So then, another way to ask that same question is to say, “How are you currently spending your $500 a day?”

I bet you are starting to see something now that might not have been as clear to you prior. You already have a lot to spend every day. Your current time is pretty valuable.

I also bet that the current hourly value for your time is higher than what you were willing and able to pay for that extra hour a day when you did the math.

The time you have is always worth more the extra time you could get. Spend it wisely.

Keep this in mind this week.