Ask HN: What do you value your time at? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you value your time at?

4 pointskaramazov6 comments

Time and money aren't always fungible, but I find it helpful to keep a number in mind in terms of opportunity cost.

How do you value your time, either at work or your leisure time?

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.

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.

Exactly! The point of conflict for me is how to equate that. It would be hard for me to have to pay $300 cash to have a great night relaxing with my wife (and someday, hopefully kids) but if I can get that much for my time, that's what its costing me to do so.

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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com