Ask AltoTRY · 10 MIN
Worth vs Market
TAIU
What your time is worth to you and what the market currently pays for it.
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Tool 57 · Develop yourself
What am I trading, and at what rate?
A guided 18 to 22 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. This exercise does not assume time matters more than money. Sometimes earning more is the right answer, and it should be able to say so.
GUIDES
You have named it. Now spend some time on it.
Each Guide gives you a clear way to look at one subject in your own time. Choose where to begin. You do not need to work through everything.
Money for hours
The exchange you are making
Write down what the money gives you and what the time costs, using the life you are actually living.
Where this often ends up: The exchange written plainly, including what you receive and what does not come back.
It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.
Around twenty minutes
The shared cost
Who else is paying
Look at who else carries part of this arrangement, what they have actually said and what you have assumed.
Where this often ends up: A clear account of who carries which cost, with assumptions kept separate from what has been said.
It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.
Around thirty minutes
Enough time
The line that would change it
Work out what would make this exchange worth continuing, changing or ending, including the possibility that it is sound as it is.
Where this often ends up: The condition that would change the arrangement, or your reason for leaving it alone.
It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.
Around twenty minutes
This Guide is free, like everything else in The Clearing.
You can see what it covers before you begin.
Start this Guide
What would another twenty per cent actually buy you?
If the answer takes more than a sentence, the hours are being paid against something nobody has looked at in years.
Money is mostly recoverable. Some of the time is not.
What you'll look at
- 01What the money is for
- 02The hours
- 03Who else pays
- 04How long
A note from Mark
I have never found the phrase work-life balance useful. It suggests two things on a set of scales, which is not what is happening. What is happening is a trade, at a rate, with terms. Most people have never read the terms.
Start with what the money is for. If somebody can tell me precisely what it secures or makes possible, the hours usually make sense. I would not interfere. If they cannot, we have found something. The hours are being paid against a figure whose origin nobody can remember.
Read my full view ↓
The part I would not compromise on is unrecoverable time. Money is largely recoverable. You can earn it later, and people do. Some time is not like that. A child is eight once. A parent is well once. It is not sentimental to price that properly, it is simply accurate.
And be honest about the end date. Almost every demanding period is described as temporary. The ones that really are have a date, a condition or an event attached to them. The ones that are not have a story instead.
What you'll get
This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.
01
The real exchange rate
02
Unrecoverable time
03
Who else pays
04
Temporary or structural
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.
See everything included ↓
- 01What you came here with
- 02What the money is actually for
- 03What the time is actually buying
- 04What is unrecoverable
- 05Who else is paying
- 06Temporary or structural
- 07The point of diminishing return
- 08The rival reading
- 09What deserves protecting
- 10What remains unresolved
- 11Where this goes next
When you finish
Bring it back to your tree.
Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.
At the end, the conversation asks how Money feels for you right now, in your own words. It also asks what, if anything, would feel different. Nothing changes on your tree unless you say it changes.
The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.
- Session
- Date
- The part of life this belongs to
- How you described it
- What would feel different
- What we found
- The alternative we tested
- What deserves protecting
- What should change, if anything
- Next actions
- What to notice or find out
- What remains unresolved
What now?
01 · Save it
What the money is actually for.
02 · Test it
Ask the person who gets the remainder of your week what they would choose.
See more ↓
What I would do
- 01
Say what the money is for, out loud, in a sentence.
- 02
Work out what more of it would actually buy.
- 03
Notice which time is unrecoverable and treat it differently.
- 04
Ask the person carrying the cost what they think.
- 05
Decide whether this arrangement has an end date, or only a story about one.
Test it
- 01
What is the money for?
- 02
What would another twenty per cent actually change?
- 03
Which of these hours will you not get back?
The alternative
The expected conclusion is that you should work less. Two alternatives usually produce more. Working hard now may be exactly right, because the money is doing something specific with an end in sight, and the exercise should say so rather than manufacture a problem. Or the reverse may be true in an unfamiliar way: earning noticeably less might improve things disproportionately, because the marginal money is buying almost nothing while the marginal hour is buying a great deal, and nobody has ever done that arithmetic.
Think about this
- What the money is actually for.
- What another twenty per cent would genuinely change.
- Which of the hours you would not get back.
- Who else is paying the time cost.
- When this started, and what was supposed to end it.
Take this to Ask Mark
You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.
This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.
Take this to Ask Mark →Put this into practice
LEARN · GUIDE
Beginner's guide to managing your money
MoneyHelper
Impartial and free, which most money advice is not.
Find out more ↗
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Next tool
What is this job costing me?
If the cost is coming from the job rather than the hours
Further thinking
Income and emotional well-being: a conflict resolved
Matthew Killingsworth, Daniel Kahneman and Barbara Mellers
The Productivity of Working Hours
John Pencavel
Long Working Hours and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke
Mika Kivimäki and colleagues
See the thinking ↓
Article
Income and emotional well-being: a conflict resolved
Matthew Killingsworth, Daniel Kahneman and Barbara Mellers
Two researchers who had published opposite findings sat down together to work out who was right. The answer was both, in different populations: for most people happiness continues to rise with income, while for an unhappy minority it flattens once real hardship is behind them. It is the most honest available answer to the question of whether more money would help, and it refuses to give you a slogan in either direction.
Article
The Productivity of Working Hours
John Pencavel
Output per hour falls sharply after a threshold, so the extra hours are frequently bought at full price and delivered at a discount.
Article
Long Working Hours and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke
Mika Kivimäki and colleagues
A meta analysis across more than half a million people. It puts a number on something usually discussed as a feeling.
Book
Four Thousand Weeks
Oliver Burkeman
The title comes from a simple observation. An average human life is surprisingly short when expressed in weeks. Burkeman challenges the idea that becoming more productive will eventually create enough time for everything. It won't.