Convert time decisions to a common currency

Ask "what is my time worth per hour?" and price time commitments in that currency.

Why it works

Money has a familiar unit (dollars) that makes trade-offs between purchases visible. Time does not have a default price, so people treat time allocations as if they are free. Assigning a personal hourly rate — even a rough one — gives time the same visible cost structure as money, making opportunity costs across time uses comparable and salient.

How to do it

1. Estimate your effective hourly rate: annual income divided by hours worked, or the rate you could charge for skilled work.
2. Before any time commitment, convert it: "This three-hour meeting costs me ~$300 in opportunity cost."
3. Ask whether the activity is worth that amount compared to alternatives — both professional and personal.
4. Apply the same logic to leisure choices: an hour of low-value scrolling has a dollar cost in foregone alternatives.

Evidence

Research on time valuation (Kahneman and others) shows that people do not spontaneously price their time, leading to systematic undervaluation of time relative to money. Interventions that make time’s value explicit do improve willingness to trade money for time. (observational)

The hourly rate heuristic is a rough approximation; the correct opportunity cost depends on what you would actually do with the time, not just its market rate.

Sources

• Hershfield et al. (2016), people who choose time over money report greater happiness, Social Psychological and Personality Science

Common mistake

Setting a high hourly rate but then spending "saved" time on low-value activities — the math works only if the freed time actually goes to higher-value uses.