Episode 1118: The Value of Your Time

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,118 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Alain Huskin: Hi, I'm Alain Huskin, author of cracking the leadership code. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling.

[00:00:24] Having the ability to lead well is key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer

[00:00:37] Scott Maderer: it allows you to think about your time and your money in a different way, which then allows you to review and reflect on that and say, do I need to change something? Do I need to modify my behavior here. Do I need to do something different here or is what I'm doing? Working is [00:01:00] what I'm doing. Exactly what I want to do.

[00:01:03] Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling. In the inspired stewardship podcast who will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world

[00:01:29] And today's episode about investing in yourself by steward of your time. I talk with you about an article by James, clear about the value of. I talk about why you need to look at the money value of your time, but it's not about greed. It's about decision-making and I'll explain some simple ways you can think about your time and your money.

[00:01:50] As we talk about stewarding your time. Wouldn't it be great. If you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long, it turns out you can. All [00:02:00] you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission, we'll come back to support the show.

[00:02:09] Just that quick. If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/. One of those things that I did years ago and I've actually kept up with is sitting down and doing some math to figure out what my time was actually worth. What I mean by that is I wanted to know.

[00:02:33] How much is one hour of my time actually worth. And the reason why was not out of some sort of weird mentality of how much can I make or what is the value of my time and what's the trade-offs, but rather to help me make decisions when I was looking at things. So for instance, I used to fly a lot and whenever I had to think about, is it.

[00:02:58] Getting that flight that [00:03:00] has a two hour layover. And what was I able to do in that two hours effectively from the airport? And would this be more effective or should I pay a few extra dollars for the direct flight and knowing how much an hour of my time was actually worth helped me make those sorts of decisions.

[00:03:17] Because at some level we all spend time for. So James clear has a great article about this. That goes into a huge depth, and I'm not going to read you the whole article. I'll link to it in the show notes for this episode, but it talks about knowing the value of your time in this sort of way, because we all have an internal feeling of what our time is.

[00:03:44] Yeah, we don't really think about it. In fact, if you do the math and figure it out, you might be surprised what I mean by, we have an internal feeling as James talks in this article. How if someone said, Hey, for one hour of work, I'll pay you 7 cents. You would immediately go no [00:04:00] way. That's not worth it. But if someone paid you $7,000 for an hour of work, most of us would probably immediately accept that because it's obvious that's worth.

[00:04:12] But when we get towards the middle of that, we start to have less of a feeling of that. Is it worth an extra, a hundred bucks on an airline ticket to avoid that two hour layover? Is it worth paying someone to do your lawn? In terms of the value that you could generate with that time. And right now we're talking about it from a money perspective, but you also need to think about it from an emotional perspective.

[00:04:37] So James goes into a couple of different methods to actually sit down and calculate it. We all the dirty easy method is take a dive down, figuring out what he calls realized income, which is how much time do you spend to earn the money that you made. And by having those two numbers, you can [00:05:00] take the money that you make and you can divide by the time you spend and you get a rough, hourly amount.

[00:05:05] And it's pretty good and it's pretty accurate, but the truth is most of the time, if that's all you do is you say I spend eight hours at work every day and I earn this much every year. And so if I multiply the number of hours, I work each day times the number of days I work and then divide by the amount I'm divide the amount I make by that time that's my time per hour.

[00:05:29] But the truth is there's probably time that you're losing track. If you commute to work, did you take into account the time that you're commuting? If you have a lunch hour at work, but that time you're not paid for, but it is time that's tied up in that you can't do something else during that time, that would also be included.

[00:05:49] And for most people. There's about 2,500 hours of time and that's 10 hours per day, either at work or commuting or doing other tasks [00:06:00] related to work times five days a week. And then take two weeks of vacation, multiply it out. That's 2,500 hours, which is what James says is a rough rule of thumb.

[00:06:12] Truth is again, you can actually do a deep dive and you can track your time. I actually have clients do this in some way and see what you're really using and what you're really spending. And you might be surprised it may end up being way more time than you actually thought. And then again, you can use your take home pay.

[00:06:33] You can use your gross for your net. Really doesn't matter. Figure out what it is I use take-home pay because the rest of that stuff is always going to be taken out. But again, you can use it either way and then you can figure out, Hey, this is about the value of your time. So James actually lists some examples in his article of if you make $12,000 per year, that's about $5 an hour.

[00:06:57] If you make $46,000 a year, [00:07:00] that's about 18, $19 an hour. If you make $62,000 a year, that's about $25 an hour at a hundred thousand dollars a year, it's only $40 an hour. And making a million dollars in income every year would be $400 an hour. And if you think about. A lot of us charge hourly rates that are higher than that.

[00:07:22] But what we're not taking into account is all the other time that we spend to generate those dollars. And so that's how James talks about it. The point of all of this again, is not to look at it and go, oh, I'm depressed. This is how little I get paid for the work that I do instead is to help you make decisions about what your time is worth.

[00:07:46] It allows you to say what, taking that hour of time for rest and relaxation. Yes. It costs me $40 for that hour in terms of non earned [00:08:00] income, but it's worth it because it recharges my batteries and allows me to get back to work. By the same token, you can look at that hour that you spent scrolling through Facebook or bingeing Netflix, or doing something else that maybe you do regret because it was non productive, didn't generate any income.

[00:08:19] And at the end of the day, it was time spent doing something that in the bigger scheme of things you wish you wouldn't do. It allows you to think about your time and your money in a different way, which then allows you to review and reflect on that and say, do I need to change something here? Do I need to modify my behavior here?

[00:08:42] Do I need to do something different? Or is what I'm doing working is what I'm doing exactly what I want to do. Is it aligned with my values and my goals and my priorities is it moving me in the direction that I want to go in [00:09:00] tomorrow. We're going to talk some about values and setting your values, but that idea of aligning our time with our values is so important to really having an intentional and successful life.

[00:09:14] Thanks for.

[00:09:15] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign. For our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting 4 4, 2, 2, 2 time tips.

[00:09:52] And that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time. [00:10:00] Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.