This is Steve Robbins. Welcome to the Get It Done Guys, quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

In today's world, we mostly have enough on our plates to fill every available second.

But our time is our most precious, limited, non-replaceable resources, and we have a billion things to do with it, and all of them need to get done, or so we believe.

We need a way to decide which things to do next, but it's not always clear how to make that choice.

At work, we can at least be guided by business goals. After all, time is money.

But how about our free hours? There, time may be happiness or joy or friendship. Decide the highest value use of your time by using some easy metrics.

Give every option you're considering a comparable currency because you can't compare apples to oranges.

Well, I can, but that's due to a head injury I sustained as a small child.

Likewise, you can't compare time that's money with time that's happiness.

So put them into the same currency. Measuring professional time is easy. Put it in terms of the

money that you'll make. If someone's willing to pay you, that's the rate that they're willing

to pay. That's the value of your time. For example, your job. You spend eight hours working each

day and you get paid for those hours at some hourly rate.

Now, if what you do will eventually bring income, but it isn't right now, that time's value

is the eventual hourly rate. Now, of course, taking into account the extra hours you needed

to make that dollar is important. So let's say that you're a consultant looking for a contract.

You spend time looking for that contract.

If you spend four days to land a six-week gig that pays $500, you're making $500 for six weeks

and four days.

So that's $14 a day.

You need to raise your rates.

But notice that you took into account the time that it took you to find that contract.

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