How Much Is Your Time With Loved Ones Worth To You?
Recently Heli and I were talking about how hard it is to measure the value of time with children, a partner, family or friends.
It feels crass to put a dollar value on it — it’s priceless after all, isn’t it?
Most of us would unequivocally say yes — of course it is! — but then proceed to act in ways that don’t align with that belief.
How do we act? Instead of guarding this so-called ‘priceless’ time at all cost, we give it away to things that matter far less to us, but that seem more urgent in the moment. Especially work.
Why do we do this?
We cringe at the idea of valuing personal time in terms of money, but yet we understand the value of money very well and respond powerfully to it in our work and public lives. It’s worth exploring how one affects the other, because the spheres do overlap and so much in our society rides on ideas about the value of people’s time.
So do a thought experiment with me:
What is a half-hour with your child, or spouse, worth to you? Would the value change if you could have it only once a month? Once a week? Every day?
Would the value of that time feel different if you were able to be fully present vs. distracted, thinking about work or other issues?
Let’s theoretically place a dollar value on our family time: If someone gave you “$10,000 in time” with your family, what would that actually mean?
Take a moment to first imagine a chunk of time with your family that could be valued at $10K. Next, imagine a chunk of work time valued at $10K.
Did you use the same factor? (Did you divide the $10K using the same number in both cases?)
Most people think about “how much will time with my family cost me?” vs “how much time will it take me to earn X?”. Unfortunately thinking in it this way, leads us to create very different factors for our thoughts around family time vs work time. We would therefore expect most people to assume they would get more hours of family time for that $10K (i.e. a smaller per-hour dollar value), than if it were “$10K of work time”. Unfortunately this emotionality means that in our inner calculus — that work time is valued higher per hour. Different factors, that unfortunately has tragic consequences for how many spend their time.
Our current understanding of the regrets that many people have at the end of life show that we don’t spend our time as wisely as we wished[1,2]. When asked, almost no one on their deathbed wishes they’d worked longer hours. Most say they wish they’d spent more time with their loved ones and friends.
This ‘deathbed’ perspective may seem morbid but hopefully you agree, it’s a powerful lens.
When you don’t create limits for yourself at work, and spend longer hours there, not only do you devalue the amount you’re being paid, but each hour you give away also makes it easier/more likely that you’ll give away that time in the future.
Consider how much you’re devaluing your own hourly rate when you overwork:
- If you work 12 hours a day, instead of 8 hours a day, you’ve devalued your hourly rate to 66%. (How would this fly: “Honey, I got a 34% pay-cut”)
- If you work hardcore hours (18 hours a day, and 16 hours on weekends slacker!), you’ve discounted your rate to 36% of its original value. Your employer is getting a real bargain, and you’re getting a 64% pay-cut. How does this fire-sale valuation of your time make you feel as a professional? Does it benefit you, the quality of your work, your family?
Let’s assume equality — that you value your family time at least as much as your work time (I’m hoping most value family time a lot more, but let’s just assume at least equality here). With this, let’s see how much family time of $10,000 dollars is worth:
- If you make $250K per year, $10K is 13 minutes of family time per day
- If you make $100K per year, $10K is 32 minutes of family time per day
- If you make $50K per year, $10K is just over an hour of family time per day
What should we do with this information? If you feel like you’re not keeping up at work, or the demands are too great, are there strategies other than “working more” that you could use to improve your job performance while still getting highly valuable time with your loved ones?
The answer, thankfully, is yes. Consider testing out these approaches this week:
- Set clear time limits for yourself at work — when you start and when you stop (as much as is possible within your circumstances)
- Set priorities and time estimates for every task you need to do each day
- Plan your days based on your estimates (‘timeblock’ your days). Plot in your priority items first, so they are more likely to get finished.
- Use the urgency (created by setting shorter work hours) to drive yourself into more efficient work practices — nothing gets us focused like a hard deadline, right? Commit to wrapping up your work at a specific time; if you don’t quite finish, make a plan to finish it tomorrow (not tonight at home).
- Starting to say ‘no’ to lower-value work and tasks will create more time in your day; you’ll personally benefit and your work performance will benefit. (There are ways to say no well, which make you look good and are less likely to upset others — I’ll write more on that soon).
Yes — it’s tough in the beginning as you overcome some of your old habits, and others may raise an eyebrow (especially if they hold to old definitions of ‘working hard’ meaning ‘working long’). Your improved performance should soon pay dividends. Keep practicing, even when you fail. Just begin again. And again.
And there is data to support this. From neuroscience we know that if we’re able to switch from supposed multitasking to focused monotasking, we could see 20–40% efficiency gains and feel less tired at the end of the day [3, 4, 5, 6]. That’s like getting another 1–2 days of work done each week. And from work done on the four way wins, executives who focused not just on work but also on self, family and community worked less hours, but were more productive[7].
And that’s just the beginning — techniques like deep work and flow can help you to do more satisfying work at a higher cognitive level. Making sure your days have uninterrupted timeblocks for focused deep work will help ensure higher quality results in less time.
Summary: To maximize your work and your life, recognize that you are a human brain inside a human body with a human heart, value your time personal and family time highly (at least as much as you value a work hour) and make your time count.
