You Probably Undervalue Your Time
I don’t know if it’s having a kid or just getting older but I’m starting to look at my time differently and it’s changing how I view my phone and the applications on it.
As an example, I used to be flippant about a company like Facebook selling my time to advertisers, now I view my time being sold as gross.
When I’m addicted to an app, it’s not just “free time”, whatever that means, it’s time I’m choosing to give away for someone else to sell.
I think a monetary value helps us to wrap our minds around things though.
Money is ultimately an expression of values so the inverse must be true, that values can be expressed in terms of money. How I choose to use my time is an expression of my values.
I can earn more money, basically increase my hourly rate, but earning more time, much more time, is limited in how much I can earn back. By exercising a lot, I might earn myself a few more years, maybe 20% more years if I’m very unhealthy, but I am never going to get to 50%. I can easily double my income.
If you make 100k per year, let’s assume you’re doing about 2000 hours of work a year, so your time is being compensated by your employer at $50/hour. Businesses are businesses, so they likely value your time at higher than that. A good estimate of a employee cost is 1.4x base salary, so let’s make that $50/hour into $70/hour.
Just so we’re dealing with round numbers, let’s make it 2x, since they want their investment in you to make money.
So, your employer may value your time at $100/hour if you’re making $50/hr.
Is it possible that spending time on facebook is worth $100/hour?
Probably not. Their revenue on a North America user in Q4 2023 was $68. That’s average though, so it varies widely and “user” may be just someone who has an account and never goes on there. If you’re a power user, it may be quite a bit more because you’re investing more time on Facebook.
Another way to think about this is that if you’re using Facebook, you’re paying about $23 a month to use the service by giving them your data. Didn’t think of it that way before huh? Would you subscribe to Facebook for $23 a month?
This is the kind of thing I mean when I say the internet distorts our time and our value of our time.
The internet turns us into products, we don’t really think about this, and allows companies to sell us as products. We are, in return, made less happy and less connected to real people.
And as an added bonus, these big tech companies are tearing the world and the United States apart and rebuilding it with their image and their values.
We don’t have to live like this.
I offered some ideas for extracting ourselves from their Gollum like hands.
Treat your time like a commodity that you can’t get back. Others are selling your time. Are you aware of the value of your time to them? What about to you?
How much are you giving to them for free?
If your time is worth $100 an hour to an employer and $68 a quarter to Facebook, you’re probably undervaluing your time by spending time on Facebook.
How much is your time worth to your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your friends, your parents, or your siblings?
Maybe your time is worth more to them than your employer? And certainly more than Facebook?
Stop giving it away to these social media leeches.
Set your time free and spend it where it’s valued.