

Ask HN: What do you value your time at? - karamazov

Time and money aren&#x27;t always fungible, but I find it helpful to keep a number in mind in terms of opportunity cost.<p>How do you value your time, either at work or your leisure time?
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kremdela
When freelancing at an hourly rate, I often use that same calculation for
everything that I do. That $15 cab ride will save me 20 minutes on the subway,
maybe I can figure out a way to work more efficiently and bill that time?

I no longer find the mentality of wanting to make that calculation productive.
Treating my time like such a scarce resource makes it hard for me to "waste"
my leisure time. My rational self questions why I choose to "lose" 6 hours
rock climbing, when it's something I completely love, but had to trade off
many other things I could have done.

Similarly, it's a huge reward for me if I can get hired for 40 hours of
Android development project that's going to "cost" me an additional 10 hours
of un-billable time to be "forced" to learn something that I've wanted to,
even if I'm "losing" more than it would have cost me to pay for some Android
dev workshop.

I'm in my early 30s and personal time seems to have shrunk. I now cherish
grabbing a beer for 45 mins after work with my childhood best friend, because
he has kids. When ten years ago we would have thought nothing about wasting
hours.

My point is that when I was eager for it, dollars were a great metric for my
hourly value. Now, personal enjoyment, or feeling like I'm doing something
valuable with that time has a much greater importance.

That's my $0.02.

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byoung2
_My point is that when I was eager for it, dollars were a great metric for my
hourly value. Now, personal enjoyment, or feeling like I 'm doing something
valuable with that time has a much greater importance._

I feel the same way now that I have a daughter (10 months old). I work full-
time, but I have always done the odd freelance or consulting job on the
side...a few hours in exchange for a few extra bucks used to be worth it. Now,
I'd rather spend that time reading to my daughter, or watching her figure out
how a toy works.

~~~
GuiA
Slightly tangential, but how do you manage to work full time as a developer
with a child when you could be working from home or freelancing and spending
more time with your daughter?

I don't have any kids, but I have a very hard time imagining myself being away
from them for 80% of the day, 5 days out of 7 when I do. I hope that by then,
I have enough money saved up so that I can easily take a few years off, or at
least have enough professional cred so that I can work on my own terms for the
most part.

~~~
byoung2
Every company I've worked for has been pretty hostile toward the idea of
working from home full time, though I can grab a day here and there to work
from home. If I can find a company willing to let me work remotely full time,
I'd take it in a heartbeat. Freelancing is to unpredictable, so I likely won't
go that route.

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dwd
A way to maximise leisure/family time is to eliminate doing things that you
can pay a service to do for considerably less than your opportunity cost. Just
remember to account for the income tax you will have to pay when comparing
costs.

