What Is Our Time Really Worth?

To estimate the financial value of your time, ask yourself: For example, when doing renovations or doing housework, you can always hire someone by paying them money. Do you do this, and how do you determine the acceptable cost in this case? And if you don't, then why?

Money is not only a universal equivalent, but also a unique resource. When planning your life, when budgeting your time, you should always consider that you can increase your resource by buying other people's time.

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You need to compare your costs when buying other people's time and spending your own time. In both cases, you lose your money (in the second case, you do not receive it), the only question is whose time is more expensive.

It should be borne in mind that in those hours when you are actually not at your workplace, you also spend or earn money. In any case, this watch also has its monetary value.

For example, you have free time and you need to fix a faucet - you can do it yourself, spending several hours on it, depending on your experience, or you can call a plumber who will fix your faucet in an hour, and you invest these few hours to acquire a new skill that will increase your value in the future.

Consequently, the value of your hour falls, but the value rises, since such losses can be viewed in terms of investments that will bring tangible returns in the future.

In practice, of course, it is better to take a balanced approach to calculating the cost of your time, combining both methods and other factors.

When calculating the value of your time, you need to base on the method of future benefits or investment, but you need to take into account the factor of your budget for today, since you are spending today, not tomorrow.

No business person who values ​​his time should do everything himself. Delegation of authority and functions is a very important part of any management process, let alone managing your time.

However, both when delegating and when calculating the cost of your time, you need to take into account the factor of significance, responsibility and qualifications. Referring to the previous example, if you have never repaired taps, you will probably spend a lot of time before you come to a satisfactory result.

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But there is also a high probability that yours will soon break, or that you will break all the plumbing, then you still have to call the plumber, and you will lose much more in any way. However, if you have done this many times already, or you just understand it, then you will do it quickly and efficiently, spending less resources, than calling the plumber.

That is, qualifications play a role here: if you already have the skills and are confident in the effectiveness of your work, then it is much easier to do it yourself than to attract other people. The most important thing is to assess how effectively you can use this time.

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