Billable Hours

Alexandra Stoddard has some excellent thoughts on the value of time versus money. As someone who works as a homemaker, and squeezes in time to work from home as a lawyer who must record every tenth of an hour in time spent, I found this essay to be quite on point! I have taken the liberty of changing some of it to first person, while she is actually writing about her husband:

"Because their job often 'prices' them at a per-hour dollar amount, people will put this same price tag on their nonwork hours. They begin to question everything, asking themselves, Is this worth my time? As a result many people hire workers to do the household chores that they might actually enjoy doing. . .

If I make a salad that takes an hour to prepare, allowing to me wonder and reflect as I enjoy the . . pleasures of chopping and dicing. . .why should I rush and diminish my pleasure in the experience, or delegate the task to someone else? I could be working, but one is no replacement for the other. . .

If I had been thinking about the dollar value of this time I would have hired someone else to do the work, but I would be giving away something I really enjoy doing. I am paid substantially for my time serving clients as their lawyer. If I were to apply my hourly rate to my free time, I'd never do any gardening. I'd be sitting at my desk working nonstop. I'd lose all the simple ways I enjoy living every day. . ."

excerpted from"Working with Grace" from Gracious Living in a New World