Mike Baumgartner

Sit down and calculate the amount of time you spend on your job. I’m serious.  Before you read any further, I want you to compute how much time you use for your employment.  Now I don’t mean just from the time you clock in at 9 a.m. You should count ALL the time – the time it takes to get ready for work, commute to work, the hours physically at work, the time to get home, and the time you need to unwind from it all. Don’t forget to include the time you might spend checking emails from home, taking calls on the weekend, and the amount of time you don’t sleep because some stress related issue is dancing in your brain.  Hard to do?  Ok, try it this way... If you are normally the kind of person who would sleep in until 10 a.m., shower maybe 2 or 3 times a week, and watch Netflix online for more hours than you speak to your spouse, then compare your ideal “I don’t have a job” day with the real “I have to work” day.  How much stuff would you not do if you didn’t do the work you do now?

Add up all those hours and divide by what you are paid for each hour of work. If you’re salaried, take your annual pay and divide by 2080 to get your hourly rate.  Remember that number.

Now let’s talk mortality.  Let’s say it will take you two minutes to read this article. When you finish this article, you will have given me two minutes of your life. You will never have those two minutes back and you are now two minutes closer to the time when your metaphorical X-Box says “game over.”

We trade our minutes for a lot of things. We not only pay $10 to go to the movies but we also hand over two hours of our life; which for a chance to watch Megan Fox in Transformers is well worth it, but for Scream 4… well, I want my life back. We sit with a child and play building blocks for three hours because it is worth it. Actually, I play building blocks, my son plays destroyer of all that dad has created (I think there is a metaphor here but I will ignore it). The time spent in laughter, smiles and, yes, even tears are parts of our life which, when spent, we never get back. Mostly we allow our time here on earth to be spent by others uselessly without remembering there is no rewind button. The time is gone. POOF.

In our work, we trade our life for money. That is the essential foundation of a job. We work to be paid so we may eat and, hopefully, spend our other available time doing things which are fun.  Now go back to that number you just crunched where your work hours are divided into your pay. That is what you trade your life for to your company. It is your true hourly wage. For many of you, you have just realized you are working well below minimum wage and the time you have lost (which you will not recover) has been given to the company in addition to your labor during business hours. (You do work when you’re at work, don’t you?)

Now before you go all Charlie Sheen on your employer, before you go and ask for a raise or quit your job, let’s flip the coin over and see the things that might make this life-for-pay arrangement worthwhile. If you are in a job where you like the people, they are your friends, or you are doing work that brings you personal reward, pride, or entertainment, or if you enjoy the challenges and the sense of accomplishment, then you have to think about whether this arrangement is actually a good deal. To do work that you enjoy and to be given money for that labor is a job worth keeping.

Last week, one of the people I respect a lot told the story of a study he read about a bunch of college kids who were offered a job at an insane rate of pay. They showed up to the worksite and were each handed a shovel. They were told to dig a hole for the first half of the day and then, for the second half, they were to fill the hole in again. That was it. At the end of the day they were handed cash and, as promised, it was a lot of cash. They were told to come back the next day and do the same thing.

The next day only 90% of the students showed up. They dug a hole, filled it up, and received a lot of cash.  By the third day half of the students had quit, and by the end of the week none of them came to work. The reason was simple: a job must be rewarding to you personally.  Money is not the great band-aid we think it is. These students would not trade their life just for money. The money was not worth it.

With all that in mind, take your real hourly wage, your thoughts of what your time on this planet is worth, and the value your job brings to your life. You may discover a job that pays less… is actually worth more. You may discover what you are paid is not worth it. You may discover the new job you want, the one that pays you lots more, means a bigger trade off than you might think. You may discover the time you give to your job now could be better shifted to time you can devote to what you really love. Remember, you will spend your life.  You have to spend it. The question is what is your time worth and what is worth your time? If this is making your head spin, then I have accomplished my mission. I know many of you want to quit your job and find something better. Most of you think that “better” means more money. Hopefully, right now, in the two minutes you just spent reading this… you might reconsider.