Navigating Time Poverty

“If my wealth should melt away it would deprive me of nothing but itself, but if yours were to depart you would be stunned and feel you were deprived of what makes you yourself. With me, wealth has a certain place; in your case it has the highest place. In short, I own my wealth, your wealth owns you.” -Seneca

Do you think professional boxer Floyd Mayweather mows his own lawn?

Hell no. He makes millions every time he steps into the boxing ring to compete. Why should he?

Most people, to some extent, save money by doing things themselves. An example of this would be cooking at home instead of going to a restaurant. Totally respectable.

However, most people don’t consider the idea of saving time in the same way.

Why is this? Past a certain point, money is a renewable resource. In simplest terms, most people trade time for money. Some people have better deals and receive more money based on their time spent. However, when you spend time on something, you don’t get that time back. Time is not a renewable resource.

Trading time for money starts at a young age. Spend an hour filing documents and receive $8 in return, or something along those lines. This seems acceptable at a young age as most people don’t have money but certainly have plenty of time. At that point in time, their skills are also not valuable enough to get paid much more than minimum wage.

Past a certain point, time becomes increasingly scarce. 

Let’s assume you live to 100 years old. After one year, you have 99 years remaining. Your remaining lifespan reduces by 1%.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum, let’s assume that you are 98 years old. A year later, you’ll go from having 2 years remaining to only 1 year remaining. Your remaining lifespan has effectively reduced by 50%.

Frightening, right? That’s an extreme example. At 50 years old, however, your remaining lifespan reduces by at least 2% with every following year. Since time is a nonrenewable resource, your time effectively becomes twice as valuable. 

Plus, through professional career development, you most likely make way more than $8 per hour. Partners at certain law firms make over $1000 per hour.

Let’s assume it takes you two hours to clean your house and hiring someone to clean your house costs $25. At a young age, this exchange certainly isn’t worth it. You would have to work for at least three hours in order to pay the cleaner. In that situation, you might as well spend the two hours cleaning the house yourself. 

What about the person who makes over $1000 per hour? In the same amount of time they spend cleaning their hours, they could have made $2000. It’s clearly not worth their time to do a mundane task. Get back in the office, stud! You’ve got some money-making to do.

Of course, life isn’t all about money. Where does enjoyment factor into all this? If you enjoy certain things, why would you put a price tag on it? That’s certainly a good point. That said, I assume that Floyd Mayweather does not enjoy mowing his own lawn. With this in mind, the logical next step would be to delegate all the mundane tasks to someone else so you can maximize the amount of time spent with things you enjoy. This could be watching copious amounts of football or grabbing drinks at the bar. If you make over $1000, don’t look at me for suggestions! I have no idea what rich people do for fun. I’d probably be eating a lot more steak every Saturday.

In order to make these decisions easier, ask yourself these four key questions:

How much money do I make per hour?

Do I enjoy this task that I’m about to do?

How long would it take me to perform this task?

How much would it cost to delegate this task to someone else?

To calculate your hourly rate on an annual salary, divide by 2000 (that’s 50 weeks times 40 the standard hours per week). If you make $58,000 per year, that’s $29 per hour assuming you don’t work overtime. Calculating overtime wages is a hassle, especially with 1.5X wage laws and having to keep track of your hours week by week. For now, keep it simple with the understanding that you actually make less per hour.

If you find joy and fulfillment in the activity, then by all means, do it. If you have too many of these activities to choose from (well first of all, what a wonderful life you have), then pick the activities from that list that bring you the most joy and delegate the less joyful ones (at least temporarily).

Compare your hourly rate versus how long it would take you to perform this task. However, you should be careful. Unless you get paid hourly and can work unlimited hours, delegating everything you dislike could potentially break the bank. See what your disposable income is and work from there. If the cost is reasonable, then you are in a position to buy back some time and should certainly do so.

Can’t think of activities to delegate? Here are some examples:

• Food. This ranges anywhere from buying groceries and cooking your own food to going to a restaurant or even having a personal chef.
• Laundry. Drop your laundry off somewhere and pick it up within a few days instead of dealing with it yourself.
• House cleaning. As much as I’m sure you enjoy using your vacuum cleaner, you can save time by having someone else clean up for you. In most cases, they’ll probably do a better job too.
• Learning things you don’t care about. Hiring a personal trainer at the gym, hiring an interpreter instead of learning the language yourself, and traveling with a tour guide so you don’t have to spend more time planning your adventures are all fine examples.

Examples of activities that you cannot delegate:

• Learning things that you either care about or are important to your personal development. Skills and knowledge don’t directly transfer from person to person. Paying someone else to attend cooking classes for you doesn’t mean you’ll be a better cook weeks later.
• Activities for physical health. Obviously, you can’t pay someone to work out for you and expect to look sexy off of someone else’s training.
• Activities for mental health. Paying someone else to attend therapy sessions for you certainly wouldn’t make sense either, right?
• Having sex with your significant other. Why? But then again, I don’t judge. If you’d like to delegate your sex life and your significant other is female, attractive, and above the age of consent, go straight to the “Contact Us” page and holla at ya boi.

Full disclosure: That last one was a joke. If you send me an email with a picture of a lady, I’m deleting the email. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Are you spending your time wisely in a way that is fulfilling to you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments or shoot me an email! That email better not contain a picture of your significant other.