Knowing the importance of your time helps you to make smart choices on when and how you spend it so that you can make the most of this precious opportunity according to your conditions, priorities, and desires.

Value-Based Decisions in Your Personal Life

When you decide how you live your personal life, split your attention into two: tasks/responsibilities and leisure time. While personal time can sound simple, there is a real difference between chores and recreational activities, and the way you handle your time-management decisions depends on the difference. But no matter how much you invest your personal time, you should assign a weight equal to the value of your work—even if no one pays you—to help you decide how to spend it.

Deciding when to buy time: tasks and responsibilities

When you have a grasp on the worth of your time in hourly increments (see the earlier post “Calculating and Controlling Your Hourly Income”), you have the details you need to make smarter time decisions. The job needs to be completed, whether you do it, or subcontract it, or even hire someone else to do it. The argument of chores is whether you want to do it yourself or trade money for someone else to do it.

Make smart decisions

You’ve got to wonder, “Is the cost of time this job will take me more than or less than the cost of recruiting someone to do the work?” You’re basically matching figures here. Think of the laundry list of domestic tasks and personal errands so you will consume every bit of your personal time. If you could pay someone to do any of these things at a rate similar to or far below your hourly rate, wouldn’t that be a fair return on your investment?

For example, it may have been a cost obstacle before you spent $50 to have your grass cut every week. But if you’ve decided that the hourly value of your labor is $50 per hour, and it takes you three hours to mow your grass, you’ve actually bought $100 worth of time ($150 worth of your time minus $50 to outsource the work). On the other hand, if you have all sorts of spare time on the weekend—and you love getting out in the yard—paying someone else to cut the lawn might be a money-time trade that doesn’t have much meaning for you.

If you enjoy the garden and dislike cleaning the house for 4 hours, why not pay a cleaning service for your house and you buy yourself four glad hours puttering over your zinnias and roses.

Next Post: Specifics of Daily Prioritization (coming up on 30 Jan 2021)