subject: How Much Is An Hour Worth? [print this page] How valuable is an hour? In the hour it takes to watch a television show, 1.8 billion text messages would have been sent and ten thousand new babies would have been born globally. In one hour, the world's super rich would have increased their wealth by another million dollars. Every hour, there are four thousand new blogs created, three thousand new web domains registered, and 2.3 million status updates posted on FaceBook. In one hour, a beam of light would have travelled from the sun to the earth seven times. All these within the span of one hour! By definition, a goal is time-bounded. As such, if you have a goal within a set time-frame, it will be important for you to determine how much an hour, your hour, is worth as this will be your benchmark in gauging whether you are ahead or lagging behind the goal you have set. Knowing how much each hour is worth to you enables you to promptly react, make up and stay ahead of your goal. Determining how much an hour is worth to you is pretty much a straight-forward procedure and requires but little mathematics. First, you need to put a financial value on your goal. If you're aiming for a new car, then that car's tag price would be your goal. You add that tag price together with your regular expenses within the time-frame you have set. You simply divide this total amount with the number of hours within your time-frame and you get the amount per hour you need to make to hit your goal. To illustrate, if you're aiming for a goal worth US$10,000.00 within 4 months, and your monthly expenses is US$4,000.00, then: Number of hours = 4 months x 160 Hours/ month = 640 hours
Monthly expenses = 4 months x US$4,000.00/ month = US$16,000.00
Amount per Hour = (US$10,000 + US$16,000) / 640 hours = US$40.62 per hour Note that it is necessary to include your monthly expenses into the computation since these basic expenses cannot be neglected as you work hard for your goal. Leaving your monthly expenses out of the equation may even result in a shortfall. And while it may not be realistic to produce your desired amount every working hour, you should at least be doing activities that will contribute to and eventually produce that amount. In other words, now that you have determined how much each hour is worth to you, would you waste that precious hour away? The advantage of knowing how much each hour is worth to you is that you can immediately see if you are lagging behind your goal. If you find you are two hours behind, then you can promptly react and exert two extra hours worth of effort to try and make up for the backlog. It is far better to spot and fix a two-hour backlog than waking up next week and realize you are two days behind. Indeed, so much can be done and achieved within one hour. We have a choice whether we optimize that one hour or waste it away. That one hour that passed by can never ever be recovered again.
