What is your time worth?

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Daily five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? What do you do when you have a lot of stuff you need to do, but not enough time? Especially if you work and your partner works and you know, you just have a lot going on.

[00:00:30] One technique is to decide how much is your time worth? You know? What should you be doing yourself? What should you actually outsource? Sometimes it's not worth it to try to figure out how to do it yourself. Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to outsource it to someone else who can one, do it better than you because it might be their area of [00:01:00] expertise.

[00:01:00] And two, can do it faster than you, and for maybe cheaper. Let's say that you're a freelancer, you charge $150 an hour for your time, which is, you know, a fairly common rate once you become a senior dev or a senior in your field. Uh, at least in my field. Now, is it worth it to spend four hours or five hours a week cleaning at your hourly rate, or is it worth it for you to hire someone who will do it for cheaper so that you can focus your time and your energy on other things that matter more to you?

[00:01:40] When you look at it from that angle, the decision is fairly clear, take that time, those five hours, give that back to yourself and do something more valuable with it. Something that a: could make you more money, or b: give you better satisfaction in your life, or, you know, make [00:02:00] progress about something that is more impactful or matters more to you, while another person who is probably faster, better, more practiced than you and is more affordable than you will come and do the cleaning for you.

[00:02:15] This is a decision that my spouse and I made around COVID? Yeah, I think it was around COVID that we made the decision where we were so busy, even though we were both working from home, we were just so, so busy that sometimes, you know, the dishes would just pile up and we would have no dishes left because we did not have the time or the energy to go and clean those dishes.

[00:02:39] So we ended up hiring a cleaning person. That cleaning person would come in once every two weeks and, you know, clean our house, you know, uh, sweep the floors and dust in the corners that we hate, and do the little bits of the washroom cleaning that we don't like doing, and give our a [00:03:00] kitchen a good clean. And the plus side was, because this person came every two weeks,

[00:03:06] we were forced to tidy up. We were forced to organize any part of our house that we hadn't organized for a while to make sure that our cleaning person is able to do their job effectively. So, you know, it was really great for us. Our cleaning person kept us accountable essentially, and also took care of those things that were really just not fun parts of our life that we didn't wanna do.

[00:03:30] And instead, we would either relax or we would work and not be worried in the back of our minds about this house that needs cleaning or you know, just do the other things that are worth far more to us than cleaning. Doing that was actually life changing. For a little while in the middl, our cleaning person wasn't available and so we didn't have someone to clean our house [00:03:58] every two weeks for a bit, [00:04:00] and honestly, we missed it. It's not that we can't do it. It's not that I don't know how to clean my house or that my spouse doesn't know how to do that. It's more that because we have the privilege of being able to hire someone, taking advantage of it just works out better. Now, you may not necessarily be in a situation where you can hire some.

[00:04:24] But thinking about the concept of what is worth your time and money kind of, versus what someone else could do for cheaper and better and faster? That's a perspective to think about when you look at all the different things you have to do in your day. So that's what I've got for you today.

[00:04:47] Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.