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Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

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Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#61

Post by orthoganol »

dudul wrote: post #20
orthoganol wrote: post #18

I've shunned founding startups or working at startups for the last ~3 years, and instead worked 15-20 hr/wk usually remotely. Time is your greatest asset, personally and professionally. It's how you stay abreast of the great opportunities of our time. You need that freedom to explore things that pique your interest or move you. Founding a startup means becoming mostly blind to the other great opportunities, which is…

What about founding a startup to try to make big money and then have the time to explore things?

1) low probability

2) even lower probability if you're an opportunist as described (note that smart investors like YC actively avoid them).

3) large minimum years investment required, especially if acquired or acqui-hired, maybe 4-10 years, during which you suffer the opportunity costs I described.

4) just easier to explore and be open to the rare opportunities, while still making decent money, by doing something like consulting at low hours. From this position you can always do a startup if you see something great.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#64

Post by jbackus »

mattmanser wrote: post #54
thejacenxpress wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

small unrepresentative sample size. a problem many studies have issues with.

And all are students, who are going to be generally middle class and young.

This is very common across most psychology studies from what I understand.

> In the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the premier journal in social psychology – the subdiscipline of psychology that should (arguably) be the most attentive to questions about the subjects’ backgrounds – 67% of the American samples (and 80% of the samples from other countries) were composed solely of undergraduates in psychology courses (Arnett 2008). In other words, a randomly selected American undergraduate is more than 4,000 times more likely to be a research participant than is a randomly selected person from outside of the West.

Source: http://hci.ucsd.edu/102b/readings/WeirdestPeople.pdf

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#65

Post by danieltillett »

dudul wrote: post #22
FreedomToCreate wrote: post #4

I wonder where this puts founders. We sacrifice a lot of time and money (missed vacations, family time as well as salaries) in the attempt to create something we can call our own. I always debate if it worth it, but there just this excitement associated with the unknown potential of what you are doing that keeps me going...and happy. Sometimes though I do wish I could take that family vacation, or purchase my own apa…

A founder who doesn't take vacations or spend time with their family will most likely go crazy and fail.

I am someone who really doesn’t like vacations. I don’t like travel, I don’t like hotels, and I don’t like eating in restaurants all the time.

What I do like is living for an extended period of time in a new location where I can really get a feel for the place (months not days). I go years without a vacation then move somewhere for 6 months or longer.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#66

Post by danielam »

roymurdock wrote: post #23

I searched for the phrase "diminishing marginal returns" but could not find it in the article which seems like a bit of an omission. This is a fundamental economic concept - the more of something you have, the less value you derive from each incremental unit. So, based on personal preferences, once you reach a certain level of income you will start to substitute away from labor (income) towards leisure/free time (non…

I think you meant "diminishing marginal utility". The law of diminishing marginal returns concerns employees not goods consumed.

Though not specifically relevant to your post, this "law" doesn't always hold. Some goods have a utility threshold that must be crossed before they become valuable or increase in utility (e.g., various medicines and antibiotics). Money operates similarly, i.e., its utility does not necessarily diminish, much less in monotonic fashion. Assume that if I make N dollars, I may be able to afford popcorn or I may be able to afford butter, but not both. Let's also assume that I derive little satisfaction from popcorn or butter alone. However, if I make N+1 dollars, I can afford both popcorn and butter from which I derive a great deal of satisfaction. The addition $1 has greater utility than the Nth dollar I had previously.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#67

Post by aaron695 »

lomnakkus wrote: post #8
eterm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed it's easier to value time over money if you have a lot of money and your time is highly valued.

... but it should be noted that there's a leveling-off as well. Once you're basically living comfortably and have the requisite free time, more money alone doesn't actually make you any happier. (Too tired to look up the research references, but I'm pretty sure there are some pretty solid findings out there on e.g. lottery winners, wealthy people, etc.)

> ... but it should be noted that there's a leveling-off as well.

This is not really true. It's a bit of a logish function though.

Lottery winners are very happy, but not 10 times someone on $100,000. Just a reasonably bit more.

I think one does have to be careful of negatives to get the money though, an extra $10,000 for a 2 hour per day commute I think would not pay off. You can't hack the system and rely just on money for happiness.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#68

Post by lmartel »

thejacenxpress wrote: post #36
elliotec wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you make of it?

small unrepresentative sample size. a problem many studies have issues with.

I agree with the unrepresentative part, but absolute sample size numbers don't tell you anything. For some experiments, N=100 is more than enough, and for others N=10000 isn't even close. Did you look at the p-values or any other confidence measurements?
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