The average person enters the work force at age 18.

The average person retires at age 65.

The average person works 40 hours per week.

This translates to an estimated 90,000 hours of our entire life we spend working.

That’s 10 full years we spend in our cubicle, on site, etc.

1/3 of our waking ours of our ENTIRE life are spent, working.

Except..

The average person only spends approximately 2 hours and 53 minutes being productive in a day at their job.

Which means we spend around 60% of our time at work actually doing..

..Nothing.

Nearly 1/6^th of our entire life we spend  awake is spent wishing the clock would speed up, waiting for our next break, the weekend, vacation..

So for jobs that do not require someone to be seated in position for exactly 40 hours per week, why do we, as society, have it designed that way?

If we can get the same amount of work done in a day, in less time, why do we continue to spend additional minutes of our lives completely wasted.

We often get caught up in using time as a measurement of value.

In many industries we want to know how much time it takes someone to complete a project in order to account for perceived value. However, if we looked at every transaction that way, we would then always give a higher value to a less experienced person. In reality, based on the fundamental learning curve, the more times we perform an activity, the less time it takes us to perform that task the next time until we reach our maximum capacity.

So why do we still associate time with value?

The next time you consider a transaction, whether it is hiring an employee, or purchasing a product or service from a business, consider the value of each project and what it is worth to you in terms of return. What need is it fulfilling? What is your expected return on investment? What is the timeframe in which you need it, and what are you willing to pay to increase the urgency?

What value does it provide you, and what value does the person or business you selected add?

If the business or person is an expert in their field with a wealth of knowledge, understanding, experience etc. the time it takes for them to complete the project should be completely null.

This is how you should evaluate how you compensate for each project.

Because..

If the world looked at things this way, we would all have nearly 3 entire years of our lives back that were spent doing nothing productive anyways..

If we priced according to value instead of time, as we gain experience and expertise and become more efficient, and effective at what we do, we would also gain back what we all really should be seeking..

Understanding there are always exceptions to every rule, some jobs require a physical person to be there at all times, but how many jobs remain customer facing indefinitely? How much would your motivation increase to seek a promotion into a career that not only paid you more money, but also allowed you more of that precious, non-renewal resource we all want more of..