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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

#211

Post by wutbrodo »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #204
askafriend wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems like the gap between your two ways of thinking mostly stems from how silly "hours worked" is as a measure of work done. You're of course right to be skeptical of being dishonest about the number of hours worked, but he has a point as well: it makes no sense to get paid less for a job simply because you're more productive (and make no mistake, most clients would lower the total price of the same task based on your ability to complete it in fewer hours).

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#212

Post by binarysolo »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #204
askafriend wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The way people typically do it is charge by value of project -- "this component is worth X dollars". Businesses want to solve problems costing D-dollars in T-time for themselves.

They couldn't care less if you spent 1 vs 10 hours on it if they can't do it themselves, so why bother oversharing your time expenditure?

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#213

Post by IkmoIkmo »

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…

I'd love to work 4 days. I currently work 5 and work in an industry (finance) where 4 earns you more than enough.

When I work 4 days with wednesday off, I don't even feel like I work... it's just a nice part of my life. On monday I think 'man it's been days since I did anything productive, I'm ready to get busy'. The next day I'm still in that flow, and the day after I've already got a day off. The same for thursday-friday, and then I've got two days off again.

When I work 5 days, on monday I feel glad to get busy again but I'm also dreading the fact that my immediate future is 5 days of work. By thursday I'm feeling like I could be productive working fewer hours, and on friday I'm really glad it's over. Further, my weekends and evenings are mostly busy with unwinding from work and preparing for the next working day. Whereas when I work 4 days, my free time is actually time for fun things.

I'm not a big spender, still on a 2010 iPhone 4 for example to give you a sense of where my priorities are at :p My money is slowly piling up.

So I could do without the money of the 5th day... but here's my issue... While my employer would probably allow 4 days work (which is not standard in and of itself, particularly not in certain industries), I KNOW that I'd be bottom rank when it comes to promotions. There's absolutely no way in hell I'd ever get a managing position working 4 days, at this company. And in a company of 5k, only the assisting/supporting roles have people working part-time. Supervisors or team leaders etc, all work full-time (or more).

I could stay in my current role forever, but it'd stop being interesting and intellectually challenging fairly soon, and I may develop some bitterness when I get to my 30s or 40s and start getting managed by people younger than me, just because they have a different vision on work-life balance.

So I'm pretty much stuck working 5 days, without being 20% more productive, earning money I don't need, because it's made abundantly clear that if you ask to work part-time, you can't ever work in a function of influence or leadership, at this company. And at most company's it's a similar story.

And I sort of get it... in a world of 5-days a week business and lots of people working 5 days, you wan't the manager to be present and available. Whereas assisting/supporting roles can be done by multiple people working part-time. It feels the only thing is left is either to be an entrepreneur or do something special (e.g. lots of jobs as 'special project officer' that's not tied to a m-f 9 to 5), but there's no standard path for regular salarymen to work part-time and still have a solid career in line with their productivity & competencies.

May I ask where you work?

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#214

Post by orthoganol »

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 don't have any direct answers, but the more ideas you execute on, the better chance something 'sticks', and the best thing you can do is make it as simple and as painless as possible to launch prototypes. Each time you do a project, take time to abstract the code into reusable components, templates, etc. and integrate it into a generator infrastructure with nodes that represent different 'types' of apps. Then when another idea comes to you, go to your generator node that is most similar, and spin something up with most of your codebase there, front end and back, incl. a stylish landing page. This is a serious time investment to get going, but if you're serious about launching an online business that 'sticks', you're most likely going to need to try out a lot of things.

As far as getting good ideas, I think they almost always have to come to you organically because you have a fascination or interest in the area, or you experience an obstacle somewhere, or you have a need for it personally. PG (or maybe it was Sam) spoke about getting into the right mindset for idea generation in the Stanford startup course, and the gist of it was 'go travel'... i.e. by default be in a 15-20 hr/ wk (max) work setup so you have time to explore things as they pique your interest.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#215

Post by raquo »

encoderer wrote: post #124
raquo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Doesn't matter, the principle is the same.

Re: Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

#216

Post by camelNotation »

bcook wrote: post #53
camelNotation wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality: You're going to die. Good Idea: Take a vacation. Enjoy life.

What about the afterlife? Many believe the temporary sacrifices they make while on Earth will benefit them for eternity in the afterlife. Whatever makes you happy. :)

I believe in the afterlife and for that reason, I don't take my own advice. I do what is virtuous, not what is always enjoyable. However, for someone like the OP, it sounds like they don't care too much for philosophy or religion since they're pulling their recommendations from scientific studies, so I offered them something that might help with their general psychological health. Hopefully one day they'll seek something deeper and not ask existential questions to computer nerds.
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