The mantra of the freelancer is to bill for the time that you have.
By the hour, by the half hour, by the day, whatever.
This, though, is a little bit of a fool's game.
We waste so much of the rest of our time, our ‘free’ time, compared to our bill time.
We get a sense of how valuable we think we are at work, and then no sense of how valuable we think we are elsewhere. This is the paradox.
I was travelling home from the Scottish dentistry show on Saturday afternoon with Ibby and Ellie from The Campbell Academy.
We were rushing to see if we could get an earlier train, and in the end we managed to get one at Edinburgh station at 4:30 instead of 5:30 for me and 6:30 for Ibby and Ellie, but there was a cost to upgrade to an earlier train.
What cost 1 hour earlier for me? What cost 2 hours earlier for Ibby and Ellie?
We had a great discussion about this about how much we were all prepared to pay to get home a bit earlier on a Saturday night.
Your free time is more valuable than you think.
When I was negotiating in years gone by to provide medical legal reports, the lawyers used to say to me, “but you can do this in the evening or at the weekend”.
I would say to them, “that's my most valuable time”. We give our time away like so much cheap wine (Simpson's quote).
Reassess your values, reassess how you spend your time. When you invest your love, you invest your life.
Blog Post Number - 4575
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