Make Money Be Happy: Maximizing Time Value

Change oil? tuning up car? Plumbing problem? Home remodelling? Do It Yourself?¹ No!! Do not act like a poor person!² Go to autorepair shop! Call professional home remodeller. Call professional plumber. No more Do It Ourselves. No more Do It Yourself books!! Let the professional handle and solve our problems.


The major reason to do anything ourselves, instead of paying a paid professional to do it, is: cheaper costs, but that reason is not universal. It cannot be applied to all people.


Sometimes a paid professional is expensive, but most of the time, it is just an impression that the paid professional's fee is expensive. We have to look and calculate from a different perspective.


In order to:

1. know that the professional's fee is expensive or not, and
   
2. decide whether is it worth it to do something ourselves or just pay a professional to do it,

we have to know the value of our personal time. Set the value of our billable hour rate first.³ Set our hourly rate.


While it is pretty easy for the hourly employee to know her hourly rate, it took a bit work for non-hourly paid employee, or a business person to know that. We could calculate by dividing the amount of money we could make in a certain period of time with how much time we used to get such amount of money.


For example, if we made US$ 400 in a week, and in that week, we worked 40 hours, then our hourly rate is:

US$ 400 : 40 hours = US$ 10 (per hour)

Now, let's say that our refrigerator is broken, and it took US$ 100 to get a professional to fix it. The professional could fix it within an hour (it means that her hourly rate is US$ 100/hour). It is expensive right? Think again.

Let's say that we could fix it too by ourselves, but since we have to see the manuals, books, and call our mechanic friends, it took us 11 hours to fix it. If our hourly rate is US$ 10, that means, to fix the refrigerator ourselves, we spent:

11 hours x US$ 10 = US$ 110

Now, is the professional's fee expensive?


How about if we ourselves could fix it fast in 9 hours. That means that to fix the refrigerator ourselves, we spent only US$ 90. Yes, we could save US$ 10, but is it worth it? Is it worth the stress and fatigue compared to if we spent our time do our routine activities with lots of fun with other colleagues?


Some will say: "The time used is just a pastime, not billable, because I did it after I went home from my work." Remember: our time is just 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Usage of sometime for some activities will affect to how much time used for other activities.


If we used our time for the Do It Yourself thing, it will certainly decrease the amount of time we used to rest, to sleep, to recreate, or to spent for interaction with other member of our family, or friends.


Time is the most valuable asset we have. It is a bless from the God. If it's wasted, it cannot be regained. So, why sweat the small stuff? As our asset, maximize our time's performance to its limit.⁴ Make Money, Maximize Our Time Valuet, and Be Happy.


So, what do you think?

PS: Comments and corrections are very welcomely invited.
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References:

¹Do It Yourself, often referred to by the acronym "DIY," is a term used by various communities that focus on people creating things for themselves without the aid of paid professionals. See: "Do It Yourself." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia.org. Wikimedia, 24 Jan. 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_it_yourself

²Free translation from famous sentence among Indonesian youngsters. The original sentence is: "Jangan kayak orang suseh (susah)."

³Billable Hours is a very common phrase used in the consulting business, especially in the legal field, such as Lawyers, Law Firm. It means that the Lawyer charge the client, a sum amount of money, for every moment used by the Lawyer to do any activities for the client's need. See: "billable hour." Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed. 2004: "a unit of time used by an attorney, law clerk, or paralegal to account for work performed and chargeable to a client. Billable hours are usually divided into quarters or tenths of an hour. "

⁴Known as velocity principle. Velocity means maximizing performance. By means of velocity, DELL efficiently could manage to have inventory for just 5 days. That means, DELL inventory will be finished if after 5 days new stock has not arrived. See: Michael Dell, DIRECT FROM DELL: Strategies that Revolutionized an Industry (USA: HarperCollins Publisher, 1999. Reprint: 2000)