Should you pay N1,000 for the delivery of an item or should you take out 45mins – 1 hour of your time to pick it up?
Well, this answer differs per person but the good thing is that at the end of this article, you’ll know where you stand.
Time and its use differ among people. The simplest truth is this: the more time you invest in something, the greater the value you get out of it. People who spend their time building interpersonal relationships form stronger bonds with others. If you spend time in a high paying job, you make a lot of money. Also, if you volunteer for charities and N.G.O’s, you do highly rewarding work.
Whatever you want out of life, it all boils down to how you spend your 24 hours.
How much should I charge for an hour of my time?
I know by intuition that if you offer me N100 for one hour of my time I would curse you. However, if you offered me N10,000 for an hour, I’d be all smiles.
If only life was that straightforward and predictable. Many things that can’t be adequately charted happen in between these extremes. The sweet in the middle of N100 – N10,000.
So, how do I calculate how much I am worth?
For me, I used the Realized Income Method. This simply means I calculated based on the money that I made last year. The one that entered my account after tax over a period of 12 months.
For this, I got two crucial values:
How much time did I spend earning money?
How much was in my bank account after all the hustling?
And the answer is…
The last step was to divide the total money earned by the total number of time spent hustling.
So, I spent a total of 2,160 hours earning money:
At 1,469,436 per year = 1,469,436/12,600 = N681 per hour.
Conclusion:
Dear 2018 Self,
Wtf were you doing paying for all those deliveries when it was above your hourly rate? Remember, danfo is cheap and it’s also your friend.
I hope you are wiser now and you have more perspective on life. These numbers show you that when you calculate how many hours actually go into earning an income, you realize that you are being paid for some of your hours and not all of them. I.e commute time is not factored into your hourly rate.
When you factor in all of the time spent in pursuit of a salary, you realize the true cost of your time – and many times, this is way below what you get paid at your 9-5.
So, do your calculations based on your own hours and income and get an idea of what to outsource and what to do for yourself.
This post was inspired by this article by James Clear.
