Your time is worth $50 per hour!

Time is money. We have all heard it, haven’t we? But how much truth is there in that phrase? Some estimates state that the worth of an average hour for a teenager or an adult is about $50 per hour. Without indulging in economic correctness straightaway, let’s look at some implications of this idea. Honestly, $50 per hour sounds a lot but is it exaggerated in the grand scheme of things? To begin with, is it just an absolute materialistic idea or is there a deeper meaning hidden in it? Can we make something out of it to make ourselves better versions of ourselves?

We are all familiar with the pay models established in most world economies, where a person is paid per hour depending on his type of work. This is an instance where we literally ‘value’ time.

Let’s personalize this experience even further. Suppose you run a company. You have many employees working for this organization of yours. You have to pay the decided money per hour to them, based on their type of work. Now even for the employees with the same nature of work, you are bound to find out that some do the work that deserves the decided pay or even deserve a raise (hoping that you are a good leader!). But on the other hand, you also spot a couple of your employees, who aren’t regular, are rather inefficient and somehow have their priorities a little different. Now the ideal step would be to understand the causes for these behaviours, but this blog is not about management principles and so let’s not get distracted.

In all fairness, would you feel indifferent while you pay the same for both categories of employees? And even if you do, the fact remains that it sets bad example for the category that works diligently. In the end, it is bound to reduce your company’s potential. An injustice to your company in realizing what it could be. Verdict: A worker not working up to his potential affects all!

Now, is it fair enough to compare oneself to that of the functioning of a company? Well, let’s check if it makes even the slightest of sense. If you sit down and track how you spend hours of one week, there are some answers to be found. Caution: Firstly, it’s going to hit you hard just looking at the accounts of how much and where you spent your time! Now enter the second week (literally or virtually), just ask yourself one small question before any activity you do; ‘Are you doing it in a manner such that if someone would do it for you and you’d pay $50 per hour for it?’

Two things are bound to happen. One, it is going to bring you to consciousness while you are performing the respective activity. Second, you are going to stop taking your own time for granted!

Now then, does this mean that the acts always have to do with earning money? NO! Say you do your chores or clean your room; how’d you do it for $50? Surely better than you do it now! Be it taking a shower or having a meet or doing any task at hand, you are more likely to do it with more meaning, more enthusiasm and a definitive purpose.

But what does that change for an individual and how does it affect the people around that individual? Coming back to the employer-employee scenario, everyone is connected to everyone. The waiter who takes more than an average effort to tend to the requirement of his customers; starts a chain reaction. When he takes the ownership to act proactively, he’s making both the restaurant owner and the customers happier. This starts a circle, a good one. In his turn, the restaurant owner takes care of his waiter more than he normally would, (also a subtle $50/hr act!) and the customer would want to visit the restaurant again allured by the hospitality of the restaurant. We are not even talking about tips here.

So, what seems like a typical capitalist, materialist idea can help you be the better version of yourself. You can begin right away, by accounting for your activities and the time you spend on them. One simple question can make that last revision for your exam worthy. The last set of dumb-bells for biceps, which you normally try to get through in an unwilling ‘get-it-done-somehow’ attitude is soon to change. Your contribution to a group project suddenly matters to you a lot more. In the process, you will realize that you are being truer to yourself. To sum it up, you are creating value. Value for your work, value for everyone connected to you and most importantly; being a respectable, valuable person in your own eyes!

So, how do you plan to spend the next hour? ‘Are you doing it in a manner such that if someone would do it for you and you’d pay $50 per hour for it?’