Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness • Hacker News Board

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#121

Post by jvz » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 3:00 AM UTC

danielam wrote: post #66

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 necessar…

Even in a (totally unrealistic) scenario where N dollars are "useless" to you, but N+1 get you something of great value, it's not true that the (N+1)th dollar has greater marginal utility than any of the other N dollars, because you need all those other dollars to buy the thing. In other words, the previous N dollars weren't actually useless: they enabled you to obtain the (N+1)th dollar. Without them, that (N+1)th dollar is just your first dollar.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#122

Post by msellout » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 3:01 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #92

jerguismi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird stance. Startups are not really about money. They are about greater risk. For a startup founder it is not unusual to spend a lot of time, and still make zero money. And it is also possible to spend only couple of years, and make so much money that you can leisurely work for couple of days a month, and go surfing for the rest of the month. And do that same thing for the rest of your life. As an employee you will…

> So it is not about whether you value your time or money. It is about your risk appetite. It is not that uncommon to do this kind of "lifestyle business" thingie where the primary goal is freedom and time, not necessarily money. Why the condescending tone for those businesses? The main motivation behind startup is making loads of money. Similar to casino players, hoping to the big payoff. There's more risk of course…

> Why the condescending tone for those businesses?

I didn't read his tone as condescending.

> Similar to casino players ... don't care much about the actual business aspects

That's quite the generalization. Is it possible you've over-fit to a few observations?

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#123

Post by EC1 » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 3:10 AM UTC

dfc wrote: post #93

EC1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I refuse to do a single minute of overtime even if it is paid. I've told employers to fire me if they feel like I should be staying longer and none of them have yet. If I ever need to make up time or do extra work, it's usually because of mismanagement and crappy deadlines as 8 hours of solid work a day is a lot , nothing should be "late". Free time is absolutely the most valuable currency. If you can prac…

What is the definition of an "instigative hobby"?

Something where you create tangible value. Video games, movies, collecting, etc are all consumer hobbies. Leather making, coding, music, knitting, etc, are instigative. The main difference is it's difficult to relate to other people about consumer hobbies unless you consume the same things. With instigative hobbies you can teach people and talk about them to others who know nothing about it. I'm not saying either is better than the other, it's just harder to relate to people when all you do is consume.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#124

Post by encoderer » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 3:11 AM UTC

raquo wrote: post #118

tamana wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dollar that pays of my payday loan, or gets me a security security deposit at an apartment, has huge marginal value. Growing from subsistence to investment has near infinite. Marginal utility.

You could just as well say that the cent that buys you a soda has a bigger marginal utility than the previous one. Sure, maybe in the context of that one transaction, but not in any general way.

Except that paying off your proximate debt and securing a place to live is far more important, from a Maslow sense, than buying a soda?

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#125

Post by sandworm101 » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 3:20 AM UTC

The OP only addresses money as a resource. That can work when talking about average people, average employees. But if you want to talk about elites, money becomes only a yardstick, a metric rather than a resource.

Certain people do not value money directly. They value having more money than other. They value relative wealth. This is why a billionaire will fight for that extra 100k from a contractor or may cut wages on a whim. This drive for relative disparity occurs on the large scale (say a billionaire going after casino workers) the medium scale (athlete A wanting to be paid more than athlete B regardless of number) and too at smallest scales (wanting to be the highest paid in the office).

This is human nature. The danger occurs when a powerful person, unable to meaningfully increase their wealth due to the law of diminished returns, decides to attack those with less.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#126

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 3:36 AM UTC

danielam wrote: post #66

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 necessar…

[deleted]

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#127

Post by orthoganol » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 3:36 AM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #108

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…

From where I stand, it looks like you have your numbers backward. The reason you start a startup is so that you can work those 15-20 hour weeks (or less) without anybody giving you grief about it. Shipping software works just fine on a few hours a weeks. Maybe a quick burst up front to get v1 out the door, but then you can ramp it down as far as you want to go. I've gone entire months without opening the IDE for some…

Most would refer to what you describe as 'lifestyle business'. I mean 'startup' as the type of startup you would see come out of YC. You work really hard, all the time. Company culture is encompassing, which means employees sacrificing a lot of time and mindshare. As a founder it becomes the only thing you think about, for years. That's startups of the YC vein, and they only want to fund startups that work this way. (Take a look at Sam's 'How to Start a Startup' course if this doesn't ring familiar).

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#128

Post by askafriend » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 3:47 AM UTC

elliotec wrote: post #33

binarysolo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 datapoint: I was doing 15-20hr/wk consulting the past few years and making as much as my FT CTO/COO position now and the stress of constant sourcing definitely was stressful (but the extra hours and lifestyle of commandeering your schedule/location was a third dimension to optimize).

How did you make that much? How often did you have to source contacts and how many did you take at a time, and for how long? I'm trying to do similar and am absorbing any input I can about this.

If I had to guess, he probably billed by the hour at a certain rate and estimated timeframe but got the work done orders of magnitude faster so his effective per hour rate is orders of magnitude higher.

E.g I tell you I am $50 an hour and the task will reasonably take 10 hours. However what you don't know is that I am extremely skilled at the task and have done it many times before so I can get it done faster than anyone else. I have frameworks already set up, and a lot of boiler plate infra from previous projects. So I get it done in 1hr. I am now effectively making $500 an hour.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#129

Post by dfc » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 4:36 AM UTC

EC1 wrote: post #123

dfc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the definition of an "instigative hobby"?

Something where you create tangible value. Video games, movies, collecting, etc are all consumer hobbies. Leather making, coding, music, knitting, etc, are instigative. The main difference is it's difficult to relate to other people about consumer hobbies unless you consume the same things. With instigative hobbies you can teach people and talk about them to others who know nothing about it. I'm not saying either is…

I take it that you coined this term all by yourself? This is the only use of "instigative hobby" that google knows about. I think you need a better adjective than instigative. Nothing about instigative makes me think the distinction is between the consumption/creation of goods. I don't agree with your conclusion but at the very least "creative hobby" seems like the obvious choice. I am not sure why I can more easily teach and talk about woodworking to someone than I could if the subject was video games or wine. This certainly does not match up with my experience with my hobby of book consumption or the experiences of my friend who is a wine sommelier. But most importantly I am not sure why I would prefer the creation of relationships where the dynamic is based on a knowledge asymmetry in my favor.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#130

Post by pacomerh » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 4:48 AM UTC

tamana wrote: post #115

manachar wrote: post #2

I wonder if this is behind the greater happiness of people with incomes over 75K per year. They actually have enough money to pay for goods and services that save them time.

$75k is approximately where money starts to have substantially diminishing marginal value. (Then add overhead when you consider that most people forget to plan for retirement and emergencies)

$75k in which part of the country though. It's a very arbitrary number if we don't establish the location.