Want a 4-Hour Workday? It’s Possible If You Predetermine Your Value.
Way too many of us are undervaluing ourselves
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I spend way too much time on “Money Twitter.” The popular niche is full of everyday people who work four-hour days. No, it’s not a fantasy. I figured out how they do it.
They simply have placed a different value on their time. When you increase how much you’re worth, the money you earn goes up. The extra money can buy you a Lambo, perhaps. But many in this Twitter crowd do something different. They use the extra money to buy their time back. That means they don’t need to work full days.
Your value is a mathematical calculation, not a pre-determined formula. You can play around with the numbers. I calculate my current value based on prior earnings and skills I’ve acquired to be about $100 per hour. This isn’t necessarily the most amount of money I’ve ever earned.
Admittedly, I’ve been paid way too much at certain times of my life. So I don’t calculate my value based on good fortune. In the good years, where I earned more than my fair share, I simply used the extra money to give back to causes I care about. What’s interesting is that while my net-worth went down, my self-worth went up. Money is only one component of your value.
Run your calendar based on your value
A decent value of $100 per hour on my time helps me make decisions. If I get asked to be on a podcast, then I think about the $100 of work that will be lost. Or I think to myself, “If I sell five eBooks, then my cost is recovered.” Not everything is about money, obviously, but it helps to know the price.
If we fail to do this, people will take advantage of our value. They’ll ask us to do free stuff, which often only benefits them. If you don’t know your value, you blindly say “yes.” When your value is known, your “nos” will happen faster.
Once, a friend who was on a migrant visa in Australia found out that he was being drastically underpaid by as much as 50% compared to local workers doing the same job for the same company. But if he dared complain about his seven-day weeks, he’d be threatened with, “We’ll send you back home if you don’t like it.” I told this story to…
