Know Your Number. It Decides Everything
Every hour you spend on $60 work is an hour you didn't spend on the work that only you can do.
Most people make decisions about their time based on feeling.
This feels too expensive.
This feels worth doing myself.
This feels like something I should handle.
And they're wrong almost every time.
Not because they're bad at math.
Because they never did the math.
Here's the math.
Take what you made last year.
Divide it by every hour you worked.
That number, that specific dollar amount, is what your time is actually worth.
Not what it feels like it's worth.
What the math says it's worth.
And once you have that number.
Every decision about how you spend your time gets simple.
Because here's what the number tells you.
Anything that costs less than your hourly rate for someone else to do.
You should not be doing yourself.
Not because you can't do it.
Not because it won't get done as well.
Because every hour you spend on sixty dollar work is an hour you didn't spend on the work that only you can do.
The yard work.
The spreadsheet updates.
The administrative tasks that pile up and eat the best hours of your morning.
The follow-up emails.
The things that feel like work but aren't making you any money.
All of it has a real cost.
And the cost isn't what you pay someone else to do it.
The cost is the money you didn't make while you were doing it yourself.
That's the number most people never calculate.
And here's the flip side.
That same math works in reverse.
If something costs less than your hourly rate.
And it buys back even one hour.
It's already paid for itself.
The tool that's fifty bucks a month.
The assistant at fifteen dollars an hour.
The service that costs a few hundred and gives you five hours of your week back.
Most people look at those numbers and hesitate.
They're calculating the cost.
They should be calculating what the cost buys back.
Because one hour back at your rate.
Is worth more than what you paid.
Every time.
Know your number.
Write it down.
Then look at every hour you spent this week.
And ask yourself honestly:
Was that worth doing at your rate?
Or did you do it because letting go felt harder than just doing it yourself?