I find it interesting that, while I often have difficulty trading money for time at the rate my time is actually worth, this particular tradeoff from the article has always been easy for me.
I tend to be pretty frugal, since before I discovered EA, my plan was to earn enough money to retire early, and the less you spend, the less you need for that. I live in a studio apartment and don’t own a car, for instance. And yet, I remembered thinking the very first day I moved to my new apartment, living alone for the first time:
”Okay, Jay—you’ve always been told to turn off the AC at night and you’ve always secretly resented having to do this. Now that you’re the one paying for it, should you do it? Well, let’s see—you have a job that pays you a few hundred bucks a day, and you think for a living. According to this calculator you found online, running the AC an extra 8 hours a day every day costs about three bucks a day. If that gives you even marginally better sleep, such that you’re 1% more productive at your job, this will pay for itself, AND be more comfortable for you personally.”
And so, despite being a cheap bastard in many ways, I happily run my AC at whatever temperature I find most comfortable (Usually 73-75F / 23-24C, because I’m Australian and thus used to hotter conditions) and to hell with the price.
Nowadays, I have finally started becoming comfortable with spending money for time, thanks to EA. The reasons are:
1) Unlike my day job, I actually care about doing the best job possible in EA, rather than just doing a good enough job. (I really should try to transmute the latter to the former—in my day job, I get paid to program things, which means I get paid to learn things which I could potentially use in EA later)
2) Since I want to do the most good possible for the world, that’s unlikely to mean retiring at 35 even if I have the savings to do it. If I want to retire early, incremental increases in lifestyle cost leads to needing to work longer to fund them. If I’m going to be working anyway, that no longer matters.
Even so, while my calculations both from Clearer Thinking and micromorts value my time at around 55-60 AUD (40-45 USD/hour) I still don’t feel comfortable making THAT trade. I think I currently value my time as about half of its true worth in money-time tradeoffs.
I find it interesting that, while I often have difficulty trading money for time at the rate my time is actually worth, this particular tradeoff from the article has always been easy for me.
I tend to be pretty frugal, since before I discovered EA, my plan was to earn enough money to retire early, and the less you spend, the less you need for that. I live in a studio apartment and don’t own a car, for instance. And yet, I remembered thinking the very first day I moved to my new apartment, living alone for the first time:
”Okay, Jay—you’ve always been told to turn off the AC at night and you’ve always secretly resented having to do this. Now that you’re the one paying for it, should you do it? Well, let’s see—you have a job that pays you a few hundred bucks a day, and you think for a living. According to this calculator you found online, running the AC an extra 8 hours a day every day costs about three bucks a day. If that gives you even marginally better sleep, such that you’re 1% more productive at your job, this will pay for itself, AND be more comfortable for you personally.”
And so, despite being a cheap bastard in many ways, I happily run my AC at whatever temperature I find most comfortable (Usually 73-75F / 23-24C, because I’m Australian and thus used to hotter conditions) and to hell with the price.
Nowadays, I have finally started becoming comfortable with spending money for time, thanks to EA. The reasons are:
1) Unlike my day job, I actually care about doing the best job possible in EA, rather than just doing a good enough job. (I really should try to transmute the latter to the former—in my day job, I get paid to program things, which means I get paid to learn things which I could potentially use in EA later)
2) Since I want to do the most good possible for the world, that’s unlikely to mean retiring at 35 even if I have the savings to do it. If I want to retire early, incremental increases in lifestyle cost leads to needing to work longer to fund them. If I’m going to be working anyway, that no longer matters.
Even so, while my calculations both from Clearer Thinking and micromorts value my time at around 55-60 AUD (40-45 USD/hour) I still don’t feel comfortable making THAT trade. I think I currently value my time as about half of its true worth in money-time tradeoffs.