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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

#131

Post by gbhn »

dvanduzer wrote: post #60
hammock wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"diminishing marginal returns" I came to a different conclusion. The wealth of time (total man-hours or aggregated lifespans) is more evenly distributed across a population than is the wealth of money. Therefore, to the extent that happiness is influenced by comparing how well-off you are vs others, a person picked at random will be pretty damn close to the same standing as whoever is the Time-Richest Person in the…

The Money-Richest Persons in the World don't have to trade nearly as much of their time to complete maintenance tasks that few people enjoy doing.

I think it's even more dramatic than that. Wealth conveys the ability to explore alternate experiences with more efficiency.

What I mean by that is the ability to either fund "vicarious" experiences. ("If I worked on this project, I'd do about the same thing as that person, so I'll hire them to do it.") As well as the more conventional kinds of acceleration like finding it easier to more frequently have more peak and different experiences like travel.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#132

Post by danieltillett »

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #74
danieltillett wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you decide where to move next? Do you follow work? Or do you work remotely? I would love to do this but find moving to be incredibly stressful, and moving every six months I would feel like I don't have a real "home".

I used to be an academic so I would go on sabbatical. I now work for myself so can basically live where I like (or more importantly where ever my wife wants to live). This is one of the nice perks of being the boss of a business with a small team that is all remote.

I would not like to move every 6 months either. I basically go years without a break, then move somewhere for a while. The last place I lived for 6 months was NYC - a totally different lifestyle to Australia and one we really enjoyed.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#133

Post by binarysolo »

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.

I'm a machine learning specialist tackling interesting/complex problems of a certain worth. There is definitely an "applying the ML hammer to every single nail/problem" thing going as well.

Example: say a company with 1B in revenue and 500M in costs: being able to give them 10% efficiency or 5% increase in revenue through optimization is a 50M value prop to them. So to spend 5M to achieve those extra $s is entirely worth it.

Of course doing things that result in that optimization are nontrivial as well, but that's what people pay me for. :)

The 15-20hrs a week thing is often a client constraint, because I'd ask for data and what not and would have to wait for them to provide me with what I ask for, or that their data has issues and I need to understand how to sanitize it.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#135

Post by dpark »

dpark wrote: post #95
brianpgordon wrote: post #71

People might work really hard while they're young so that they can retire early and be happy and secure later. Those people would look like they value money more than their time, and probably aren't going to be very happy right now, but in 30 years they're going to be much happier than people still working full-time.

Depends on what people your talking about. People working wage jobs might retire early if they work really hard and save the extra. Salaried workers really don't make that much more for working themselves to death. Bonuses might be higher, promotions might be a little quicker. Or they might not. Certainly working 80 hours will not result in twice the pay for most salaried employees, not even close. Working more effic…

I hate that I can't fix that typo... I'm blaming autocorrect

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#137

Post by vasu_man »

Bamafan wrote: post #96
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…

Yep. Check out 4:06 from this scene from "The Aviator": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z1pPyarKhA Lady: "We don't care about money here, Mr. Hughes" Howard Hughes: "That's because you have it"

There is one particular restaurant scene (S2E05) in FRIENDS dealing on the same subject.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#138

Post by TranquilMarmot »

notacoward wrote: post #105
TranquilMarmot wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you make the decision to go part time instead of full time? Did you have a sizable amount of cash saved up before choosing to do so, or did you do the math, figure "I only need $X to live each month so I'll only work enough hours to make that"? If that's the case, how are you saving money for retirement? Or do you just want to live out your retirement as a ski bum, or a monk?

Instead of repeating myself, I'll just cite the blog post I wrote about this, and hope the rest of HN doesn't mind. http://pl.atyp.us/2013-10-leaning-out.html Things have changed only a bit since then. A couple of years' worth of still-increasing income have brought me even closer to permanent financial security. I'm still pretty unimpressed by where this industry is headed technically, socially, and financially. I s…

Thanks for sharing, that was a nice read. Burning out on not just projects but with code is something that resonates with me and I'm only two years into my career! It's very kind of Red Hat to give you time off and let you switch to part time.

I'm young blood, so I have hope for where the industry is headed technically and financially (not so sure about socially...). Then again, I don't really have a choice but to have hope otherwise my future doesn't look too bright :)

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#139

Post by TranquilMarmot »

welly wrote: post #89
TranquilMarmot wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you decide where to move next? Do you follow work? Or do you work remotely? I would love to do this but find moving to be incredibly stressful, and moving every six months I would feel like I don't have a real "home".

I've lead a similar life to the OP so can probably answer this one. In the last 10 years, I've lived and worked Switzerland for 6 months, in the south of France for 9 months (contracting), in Scotland for a year, Canada for 10 months, New Zealand for 2 years, Australia on several occasions for a year or so at a time. I'm currently back in Australia now. In between those, I've lived back in the England, my home countr…

I can relate to accumulating "stuff"... when I move to the town I'm currently living in, one of my goals was to not acquire anything new that I didn't need. Two years later and just thinking about moving makes me dizzy because I have so many things, most of which are pretty frivolous and I would just donate/throw out when I move. Frivolous, but I'm going to miss it all anyway...

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#140

Post by linuxhansl »

Could not agree more. I always value time over money.

I've gone even further, I calculate almost everything in time now. If can safe $100 by waiting in line or doing some other time intensive task... How much of my time is that worth?

I came to about $100/h. I.e. if I need to spend more than one hour of my spare time to safe $100, I won't do it. (Doesn't mean I make that much or whatever, just that that's how I value my spare time)

For the people who work for me if there's a weekend chore (watch a software release, off hours troubleshooting, etc), I always offer one-for-one time off and only then financial compensation.

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