About time and life, I read this year and strongly recommend the book: "The Shortness of Life" of Sêneca.
Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness
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Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness
#102Having enough money that you can value time over it is associated with greater happiness.
Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness
#103I 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…
Yup.
If you look at table 3, which is a study of the museum going group, you can actually see that SWB (subjective well being) is mostly correlated with household income and material affluence. However in table 3a, we can see that SWB is negatively correlated with material striving.
In other words, people who are concentrated on making money are the people who don't have money and are also unhappy.
People who value time are the people who already have money and don't have to worry about it.
The conclusion I would make from this is that the more money, and implicitly more time freedom you have, the happier you are. If you are trying to make money but don't have any, you're not happy.
Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness
#104People 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.
Or you'll find that all the time you put into your work has left you with little hobbies and few relationships outside of your work. You'll also have been honing only the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace, not be happy in your life. What happens is you retire and then you find you're not really good at anything else, and your body is old and creaky and you just don't have the energy to learn things as much anymore. Or, even worse, if you didn't make quite as good investments as you thought you were or there is a huge market downturn and now you have no skills or resources. It happens to a lot of people.
Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very close to my reaction. Having whichever you value is a big factor in happiness. Rich people have money and crave time. The unemployed have time and crave money. No surprise which of those is happier. The more interesting cases are people who don't have a lot of either but give up time for money (most of us) or give up money for time (ski bums, monks, bohemians of many kinds). Which we pursue is a strong statement…
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 still want to finish one more Big Thing for pay, maybe one more on my own, and then just dabble in whichever smaller projects catch my fancy. I know, based on the responses to that blog post, that I'm far from alone. I suspect that many people reading this will eventually end up in the same place, whether they believe it now or not.
Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness
#106We live an average 70-80 years on a lucky rocky, watery ball among bazillions gaseous, frozen or rocky balls into a dark void somewhat existing since a dozen billion years. Money is nothing vs living our time happily or peacefully at least.
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Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness
#107This approach certainly worked out well for me.
From way back in the "paying dues" phase, trading away stock options in favor of extra vacation time, and taking leaves of unpaid absence. On to my contracting days, working short gigs to maximize "bench" time and spending several months a year traveling abroad. Building SaaS products during some of that downtime and growing them in the background so that eventually they would let me step away from the day jobs entirely.
It has paid off two-fold, with both a better quality of life during the process, and a nice early "retirement", leaving lots of time to spend with the kids from here on out.
5 stars, would recommend. Don't chase money, chase free time.
Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness
#108I'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 of my paying products.
The problem with client work is that as soon as you stop working, the client stops sending you money. SaaS doesn't work that way. Take advantage of that!
Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness
#109Ask some poor people if valuing time over money makes them happy, then get back to me.
Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
That is extremely flawed logic. You picked an arbitrary example to make your point, but your point requires excluding other possible uses of the Nth dollar to make any sense. "Oh, with 15k I could buy a compact car that I wouldn't like much, but with 30k I could buy an entry level sports car that I would enjoy a lot. So the second 15k has greater utility than the first 15k." Does this make sense? Of course not. The f…
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.