I have a coworker with an obnoxious habit.
Just about every morning, this coworker stops in my doorframe with a complaint. “I’m so busy!” they remind me, before spending the next few minutes explaining how much work has been dumped on their desk.
Then, they do something bizarre. They walk a few offices down, and repeat the process again with another coworker.
And again.
And again…
One day, I did a sneaky experiment. I tracked my coworker’s path of complaint around the office, jotting down how much time was spent with each person.
All told, my coworker easily spends nearly an hour each morning explaining to the world how much work they have to do! Which seems like an awfully long time for somebody so busy.
I laughed at this, right before I got back to surfing the internet to avoid my own mountain of work.
How much time do you waste each day?
The average American watches 5 hours and 4 minutes of TV a day. They spend another 5 hours per day on their cell phones. And that’s not counting the 54 minutes they admit to wasting at work each day.
And it’s not just the obvious time sucks. I have a full time job and a blog that’s turned into a full time side hustle, and I know I’m just as susceptible as anyone to working inefficiently, having my breaks turn into siestas, or “researching” (aka convincing myself I’m working on something when I’m actually just mindlessly clicking through the internet.)
In any case, we’ll be generous. Since we’re not envious of work-a-holic robots around here, we’ll cut that 11-hour figure in half.
That still leaves nearly 6 hours of wasted time every single day.
That’s 40 hours a week. Another full time job!
We’re talking 87 days a year! 3 straight months!
I call taking advantage of these lost hours Time Hacking, and I’m convinced harnessing it’s power is the most effective way to building wealth.
How much is your time worth?
To find out, we can start with your hourly wage.
If you’ve got a bachelor’s degree, that’s usually $20 an hour minimum. Maybe around $30-40 if you’ve chosen a higher paying field, or even more if you have a couple years of experience under your belt.
At this rate, you could earn an extra $40,000 to $70,000 per year! Just from watching less TV and realizing that your life will be okay even if you never beat that next level of Candy Crush.
Is that it though? The average reader of this blog is south of age 40. Most are in their 20s or early 30s.
If that’s you, wasting time is even more of a tragedy. That lost income is money that you could invest early, and then let the powers of compound interest carry you towards millions.
For those reasons, I don’t think it’s unrealistic to value your time today at a minimum of $50 an hour. (Even if you make less)
If there’s 40 hours of wasted time per week to reclaim, that’s 2,184 hours a year, or $109,200 per year!
You’re already rich. You just haven’t capitalized on it yet.
Everything compounds.
You might be thinking those figures sound a little high, but hear me out.
We all know investments compound. But so does success.
The time you spend learning skills, creating a side hustle, or building something valuable, nudges the boulder into movement. And over time, that heavy boulder builds up speed and starts carrying some serious momentum.
- Skills you learn today can be marketed for sale in the future.
- Business you start can eventually be sold.
- Side hustle money can be invested and compounded.
Eventually, that boulder of success moves away from the crowd. Instead of complaining about money like everyone else, you become a remarkably high achiever. You shift your frame of reference from hoping to maybe-one-day retire, to escaping the rat race decades before anyone else thinks is possible.
You have no idea what you’re capable of.
I’ll admit, I find it disturbing to realize how much my hours of youtube’ing really costs me. Nobody wants to learn that they’re leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table.
But I also find it incredibly encouraging to recognize my unlocked potential.
Few humans ever actually reach their potential. But occasionally, an example comes along who shows the world what can be done when you use your limited time on earth to its maximum ability.
Warren Buffett famously reads 500 to 1,000 pages per day. Yeah, that’s insane…
But after a lifetime of that kind of productivity, he’s said to know details about all 3,700 publicly traded companies. And thousands more internationally.
While that might sound like a far fetched myth, it’s not impossible when you consider the compounding effect of an ultra-productive lifetime. From the man himself,
Read 500 pages every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.” – Warren Buffett
Productivity like this leads to huge riches. Our free market society rewards exceptionalism, which is exactly why folks like Buffett, Gates, Bezos, Oprah, and Elon Musk have the fortunes they do. They took action on their time, and they found amazing results.
Of course, you don’t have to build the next great American business or become the world’s greatest investor. Simply shifting some of your down time from unproductive to productive can have astounding and long lasting results.
Find your hack, and astound yourself with the results.
If you need an example, you’re looking at it. I replaced watching TV and wasting time on forums with writing articles to help people. The result is an exponentially growing website that’s accidentally earning some meaningful income. And with hundreds of thousands of readers, I can see its effect ripple out and inspire change. That change not only impacts my life, but compounds in the lives of all those readers, too.
It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.
And that’s just one example. In the age of the internet and sharing economy, side hustles are everywhere. We have more options than ever for cashing in on our downtime:
- Picking up a part time job
- Using skills you already have to provide consulting services
- Driving for uber or lyft
- Freelance writing
- Playing with puppies on Rover
- Renting out an extra room on AirBnb
- Selling crafts on Etsy
- Creating YouTube videos
- Building a website
- Writing a book
- Flipping furniture, tickets, etc. on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace
- Any of these other easy ways to make an extra $11,000+ in one year.
I could go on and on, but nobody knows better what you have to offer the world than you do.
So, the choice is yours. Are you going to hack into your lost time, and reclaim the value of that time? Are you going to cash in on your $100,000 side hustle?
Everyday is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we’ve got 24 hours each.” – Christopher Rice
“I laughed at this, right before I got back to surfing the internet to avoid my own mountain of work.”
>ROFL – stones and glass houses, I like this…Presumably you didn’t actually spend an entire hour tracking the progress of your co-worker before getting back to your surfing….
“We all know investments compound. But so does success.” – Exactly what I was thinking, glad you took the post in this direction.
I don’t know if I fully agree with you on exceptionalism, simply because the economic system under the Anglo Saxon model has increasingly led to a ‘winner takes all’ phenomenon. E.g. in the days before the Internet if Amazon were a brick and mortar bookstore, a competitor could also open a similar store and have a chance of competing. With the network effects and scale that the Internet offers, it’s a different story and it’s incredibly difficult to compete.
“You have no idea what you’re capable of.”
>Because of this the actual value of ‘wasted’ time can’t ever truly be calculated, innumerable counter-factuals would have to be weighed and considered. You can always get more money, but you can never ever get more time. Time is running out, on you on me and on everybody else and once it’s gone it’s gone – so I intend on making the most of mine.
HH
Watching TV and surfing FB does not bring value…it’s a comfort.
Awesome article! I think so many of us fill our time to make ourselves feel busy because that is valued in this society. But we confuse being busy with being productive and use our busyness to justify our lack of productivity.
I have a difficult time feeling guilty for browsing the internet at work given the amount of time I spend at home or on “vacation” checking emails, time spent staying at work late, or the time spent working remotely on sick days or snow days.
I feel like we are in an era where everyone has monotonous boring cubicle jobs, and all anyone has the mental capacity to do when they get home is sink into the couch and watch Netflix. Netflix and chill is a socially acceptable hobby now whereas it still isn’t cool to say you watch tv in your spare time. Hell, I’m so brain dead after work these days that don’t even have the mental energy to play video games anymore, and reading or doing actual hobbies is definitely out of the question. Just give me an endless library of B- rated Netflix shows to binge on, endless online news article headlines to mindlessly scan, and an endless feed of Instagram pics to scroll through and I’m good.
The only thing I prioritize outside of work is going to the gym which costs me about 10hrs/week when you include transportation, changing, and the extra laundry and showering required. 60hrs of work a week plus 10hrs spent on exercising, and a good weekend for me turns into one where I’m able to clean my apartment and do my laundry. Taking the extra time to try to coordinate dog walking or putting miles on my car to drive Uber isn’t worth it for me right now.
I would definitely consider AirBnb if I bought a house, but otherwise I just think it takes a very specific life set-up to get to where side hustles should fit into your life rather than trying to jam side hustles into your free time, especially if your work/life balance isn’t ideal or you have kids.
I appreciate the post and love the blog (usually agree on most topics) but I absolutely agree with Julian here. My routine is almost a carbon copy of his. Work from 8:30-5, drive to the gym, exercise or play basketball and get home anywhere between 6:30-8. Have dinner, relax and go to bed. Then do it all again the next day. I’d have to sacrifice gym time or sleep time and that’s not something I’m prepared to do at this time.
I agree with Brian here…
The numbers Mr. Money Wizard used was based on an average survey which includes all kinds of people (the ones that work daily and the ones that don’t). Take TV for instance. There is no way Brian above, me and many other million of workers spend 5 hours on tv daily. I don’t spend 1 hour a day if so I get the chance to watch it whatsoever. Daily routine starts at 4:55. Breakfast, drive wife to metro station and then head to swimming. Take a shower and get to work around 7:50. stays there until 6:30/7pm. Get home almost 8, take a shower, have dinner, get all things ready for the next day (clothes, food, etc) and it is already close to 10 pm which means bed time. Some days if finishes everything early, you get the chance to watch 1 hour of tv or read something. And that is pretty much it. If I don’t “search” the internet or spend some time on the phone at work (which is not that much), I would be working anyways so wouldn’t be able to do anything else. The only option would be either getting less hours of sleep (which I don’t recommend), cuting off the exercise (don’t recommend either), or using the weekends to do so but as Julian said, it is hard to find the williness to do so on the weekends other than spend some time off the routine with fun things to do.
It is said and understood that if you want to achive something meaningful you have to sacrifice but that’s hard to balance.
Sounds like you’ve already applied some hacks – trading potential down time in the morning for quality time with your wife and keeping up with excercise. While not necessarily monetary, both worthwhile investments!
Great and inspiring article.
I have been reading your blog for a few months now and it gave me the motivation to start my own blog, which I have been wanting to do for years but never had the courage or bravery to actually make it happen because I feared that people would consider it as a waste of time.
Looking forward to reading your next post Money Wizard.
C.W.B.
PURESPRINKLE.COM
This is the most eye opening article I’ve read in a long time.
Great read my friend!!
If people could even eliminate a fraction of that wasted time and do something to make more money it’d be incredibly life changing!
Would love to mention/reference this article in the future if it is ok with you.
Keep up the hard work!
-Chris
Share away! Thanks!