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

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#201

Post by Retric » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 5:01 PM UTC

throwaway7767 wrote: post #171

sjclemmy wrote: post #166

When I was young and fresh out of college, I earned £8000 per annum and attempted to support a non-working partner and a small child. The idea of time vs money was irrelevant. I did not have enough money to live on. I would work as much as possible to get more money, and it still wasn't enough to live on. Fast forward to now where I have enough money not to bother about budgeting day to day and there is still enough…

Absolutely, there is a point below which people just don't have the luxury to not take any extra work they can. There is, however, also a large group of people who could have more free time but choose to work more because they prefer to own more stuff to having more free time. I work an 80% job (4-day work weeks) because I have reached the point where I don't really need more money. I don't consider myself rich, but…

There is also a savings effect which makes making and saving more money start to have huge upsides. aka, if you live on 40k per year and make 60k per year you can retire young, but bump that to 120k and you can 'save' years as long as you don't let lifestyle creep set in.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#202

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #45

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…

>"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…

[deleted]

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#203

Post by nathan_f77 » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

EC1 wrote: post #193

dfc wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 I could not think of someone I'd get along with less . You must be much older than me. This is exactly what I'm talking about. I'd never want to listen to someone tell me about the history of something, that's boring, that's regurgitation, I can google that. If you've made win…

I kind of agree about the wine sommelier, I don't want to go into that much detail about the history of wines. The movie "Somm" was enough for me. But I do like history, especially if it's directly related to the person I'm talking to, or the place I'm in.

This Reddit thread was one of the most interesting things I've read recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/3zgffa/what_is_the...

And I'm in Phnom Penh now, having done the tour of the Killing Fields and S-21 prison. Learning about Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, and even refreshing my memory about communism, the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, etc. I'm finding it all very interesting now.

But also I agree with the commenter above you, "creative hobbies" would make more sense than "instigative".

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#204

Post by nathan_f77 » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 5:21 PM UTC

askafriend wrote: post #128

elliotec wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

That's pretty dishonest. I would never charge like that. I would rather be completely upfront with a client and charge them $500 per hour for 1 hour, if I know that I can get it done that fast, and it's really providing that much value.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#205

Post by nathan_f77 » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #161

orthoganol wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Indeed. That's the definition on paper, but it's your business so you get to run it how you like. There is surprisingly little correlation between hours worked and end result. I could have easily worked four years of 80 hour weeks, ruined all my relationships and given myself health issues building the product that pays my bills today. I can't imagine the monthly recurring revenue numbers would reflect that effort. I…

I've tried and failed many times to come up with some kind of small SaaS app that I can just keep running in the background. All of my ideas seem to be just too niche, like solving some tiny problem that no-one would care to pay for. Mainly a lot of different integrations and synchronization between various services. And then I tried my hand at blogs with advertising, or Amazon affiliate sites that went nowhere. And monetized Youtube channels.

Do you have any advice about coming up with ideas for real products, that solve real problems for paying customers? I guess another issue is that the market is getting more and more saturated with mobile and web apps now. It seems like you have to be very lucky to stumble on the gold ideas: where it's very easy to build, and people really want to pay for it.

Or maybe I'm aiming too low, trying to find some minimal weekend app or website. What would be an average amount of effort that you need to put into your projects before you start seeing a return? Or do you crank out a whole bunch of app ideas until you find one that sticks?

EDIT: Really big coincidence, I just read the "How I Built a Side Project" post: https://stayintech.com/info/sideproject

That's almost exactly what's happened to me, 3 or 4 times now. I come up with an interesting idea, build it, post it on Reddit and Hacker News. It gets maybe 20,000 views, then traffic slows down, then I just end up paying a lot of money to keep it running. And it's usually something basic that's very tough to monetize.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#206

Post by zardo » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 5:53 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #174

throwaway7767 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, there is a point below which people just don't have the luxury to not take any extra work they can. There is, however, also a large group of people who could have more free time but choose to work more because they prefer to own more stuff to having more free time. I work an 80% job (4-day work weeks) because I have reached the point where I don't really need more money. I don't consider myself rich, but…

There is also a group of people who would like to work less but are in an industry that doesn't really offer part time jobs.

They still (might) have the option of working less by not spending their money and retiring earlier. If you make $200k you probably can't work part time for $100k, but you can spend significantly less than you make and retire a few decades earlier than your peers.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#207

Post by j45 » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 6:46 PM UTC

orthoganol wrote: post #127

jasonkester wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I'm not sure if a lifestyle business is seen as a degrading term when hurled at someone. The only people it's a lifestyle business for is people who already have the lifestyle of not necessarily having to work - investors.

What we have left is a term that's used to whack people who could add value in a lot of way to only think they can do it if a VC gives them their blessing of worth, validation and permission to innovate. I don't think that's accurate or fair to anyone.

For entrepreneurs, there is no lifestyle business, or owning a business until it can run without you.

There are plenty of SaaS businesses in the $1M to 5M/yr range that would be perfectly suitable "failures". To me, it doesn't seem unprudent prudent to collect a few of these "lifestyle failures" and be ready to build the $100M company instead of taking moonshots without any experience in building a business.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#208

Post by manachar » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 10:38 PM UTC

lucaspiller wrote: post #145

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.

> They actually have enough money to pay for goods and services that save them time. I think you are missing the point. There isn't a magical device the upper classes buy that saves then time (maybe this is the case for poorer people, e.g. having a washing machine is quicker than washing clothes by hand), but once you earn so much, get comfortable and achieve your own level of success, you start to value things other…

It's not about being a device per se that provides most of the time saving. There are some devices sure, but the biggest time savings come from services.

As you increase your income you can buy services such as landscaping, housekeeping, painters, etc.

With goods, the biggest time savings can come from not having to shop around for the best value. It's not uncommon to have to shop between multiple grocery stores to get the most for your dollar.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#209

Post by dfc » Sat, Jan 09, 2016, 12:36 AM UTC

EC1 wrote: post #193

dfc wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 I could not think of someone I'd get along with less . You must be much older than me. This is exactly what I'm talking about. I'd never want to listen to someone tell me about the history of something, that's boring, that's regurgitation, I can google that. If you've made win…

Where do you see me talk about the "history of something"? Or do you think that "history of something" is the only genre of books?

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#210

Post by jasonkester » Sat, Jan 09, 2016, 12:40 AM UTC

nathan_f77 wrote: post #205

jasonkester wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. That's the definition on paper, but it's your business so you get to run it how you like. There is surprisingly little correlation between hours worked and end result. I could have easily worked four years of 80 hour weeks, ruined all my relationships and given myself health issues building the product that pays my bills today. I can't imagine the monthly recurring revenue numbers would reflect that effort. I…

I've tried and failed many times to come up with some kind of small SaaS app that I can just keep running in the background. All of my ideas seem to be just too niche, like solving some tiny problem that no-one would care to pay for. Mainly a lot of different integrations and synchronization between various services. And then I tried my hand at blogs with advertising, or Amazon affiliate sites that went nowhere. And…

I've been meaning to spin this into a full blog post, but here is the list of criteria that I use to evaluate new ideas:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9883697

Naturally, then you need to do all the traditional market validation steps, but this at least filters your ideas down to ones that maybe stand a chance.