7 ms·

We need to teach that owning your time is the path to wealth

52 points by gsibble 4y ago

unstatusthequo 4y ago
Don’t let people steal your time. There is power in saying “no.” And it’s ok to say it. Try this. Next time someone asks you to do something you don’t want to do, respond with “How am I supposed to do that?” It flips it on them and makes them solve the problem they created. Credit Chris Voss for this. He helped me realize no is fine, and a great way to fulfill a defensive time position. Time is money, but time is also life, so don’t let others steal it from you.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  If you are working for a wage, someone is already stealing time from you, they're just paying you nominal amount for it.
  - pixelfarmer 4y ago
    But why is someone's time more worth than someone else's? Why are people being paid an amount they cannot even live from (i.e. their time investment is net negative from an economical point of view)? Looks like this value replacement for time has some major flaws and issues ...
    - yetihehe 4y ago
      How would you fix that?
- ivanche 4y ago
  This! At first I felt uncomfortable saying that to people (and, more or less, all other things about which Chris wrote in his masterpiece) but oh boy it works like a charm every time.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  If someone asks “How am I supposed to do that?”, I'm going to explain it to them. If you don't want to do something, simply say: "No."
  - ivanche 4y ago
    That is exactly the point of such a question! Your counterpart wants you to spend time and energy to solve their problem, while concurrently you'll think the whole time you have control over situation. If your counterpart is any good, they'll gently push you towards the solution they want implemented. In the end you'll be under impression it's your solution and your relationship with the counterpart was excellent.
SaberTail 4y ago
For centuries, people have advocated for systems where workers keep the fruits of their labors rather than have them appropriated by those with the ownership. They're called "communists" and "socialists".
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  And communism was such a massive success story with tens of millions of victims...
  - Spivak 4y ago
    This is such a pointless discussion. If the economic and political atrocities that occurred under capitalism were listed out it would make the book on communism look like a pamphlet. Shitty people doing shitty things can and will happen under every economic and political system. If you let people convince you that trying to break the cycle of worker exploitation by changing our literally feudalist corporate structure in any way is a one way ticket to the gulag then the only thing that will happen is you’ll be happier with the lot in life that’s been decided for you.
    - corbulo 4y ago
      First: define capitalism Second: list famines
- gooseus 4y ago
  Yes, history remembers well the efforts of those people, and their results. And if you define who counts as "workers" and who the "owners" are just so, you can also add "fascist" to the list of people who advocate for a similar system (national socialists). It's almost as if rhetoric that promises "workers" a way to take back the fruits of their labor from evil "owners" is a really great way for populist demagogues (on either side) to whip up a Revolution that installs a new groups of oligarchs as a central Party apparatus that effectively owns everything... on behalf of the Workers, of course.
  - 4y ago
gopalv 4y ago
"I can always make more money, I can't make more time." This was something a mentor told me, but then described with a lot more nuance around what that means. That money is something you can save or borrow, but time is a much harder thing to borrow or save. That when you are young time feels endless and money cramps you up. Instead of chasing money as a goal from that perspective, to chase the ownership of your time which you are going to exchange for money right now. Not to retire and then chase your passion, but to exercise your passions when you have "young time" instead. Sure, this advice has only been relevant to me after I got past all my debt. After that point, you can turn money into time in interesting ways - you can hire a cook, you can live closer to work for more rent, have a babysitter for sunday morning. But that the purpose of work is not to make money, but to spend your other time well.
- pixelfarmer 4y ago
  Freedom is freedom given to others. Freedom is often misunderstood as personal/egoistical freedom, but that is not how it works if you want everyone to be as free as possible. For years I include that this means occupying the least amount of time of others with your own agenda, which clearly includes the usual paid work relationship, but also all sorts of other dependencies, most often artificially created ones to actually limit the freedom, like debt for good education etc. These self-proclaimed "free societies" we live in are a lot, but free? There is tons of spare room to the top, while the bottom is much closer than many think.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  >"I can always make more money, I can't make more time." True. But with money you can buy other people's time and free your time to do other things instead.
brnewd 4y ago
As software developers we are uniquely positioned to build products or services that can practically run on it's own, freeing up time to do more meaningful things in life. The hard part is coming up with the right idea and sticking to it long enough to bear fruit.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >to build products or services that can practically run on it's own No web service/app that is in the business of making money can just "run on its own", but needs constant development and maintenance. That's why the demand for web devs is so high. If every SW project would be a "fire and forget" experience as you claim, the career wouldn't be nearly as well paid as it is right now. Even phone apps need to be updated or Apple/Google will remove them from the store. SW in the '90's was more or less "fire and forget", but salaries and the demand then were nowhere near as high as they were to day.
  - brnewd 4y ago
    If you choose the right niche and use stable libraries there is no need to constantly chase the latest framework or software architecture. A lot of the endless development cycle is self induced work.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      Yeah sure, if you build a simple website/app for a mom&pop shop then yes, but the pay is equally poor and it's a race to the bottom. Even in old cobol codebases coders are still needed to keep up with the changing environment. The big money in SW is always made in apps and services that are scalable, and that needs constanrt engineering effort. SW apps that aren't scalable, are a race to the bottom with low margins and low pay that has been offshored or replaced by the services of SW giants.
      - brnewd 4y ago
        You're not wrong, it is almost the default to end up with a high maintenance stack and the (perceived) need to churn out new features. I've done a few hype driven migrations myself. But if you set out with the primary goal to reduce the amount of time required to run and maintain a software/SaaS/paas/you name it business you can make huge wins in the time department. Maybe I'm just lucky with a niche subscription based platform that doesn't need much tuning and perhaps 10 support emails a day. It doesn't return a FAANG salary but does net me €90k with minimal operational costs. The key is not build that app you don't really need (and indeed requires constant baby sitting to please Apple/Google) not rewrite everything to the latest fad eg Svelte + CockroachDB using edge compute on fly.io.
DeathArrow 4y ago
>For the select few, including the one percent, we are compensated differently. We are paid for the solution, not for the effort. If a solution takes a day or a year, we are compensated the same amount. This difference means that time does not equal money, since the compensation is the same but time investment is differential. But if you do X and win Y money, there's a difference between doing 365 * X in a year and win 365 * Y money and do X in a year and win Y money, so time IS money.
DeathArrow 4y ago
I don't get what the article means by "owning". Buying and owning stock? Starting and owning your own business? Taking part in cooperatives? How does one own time and equity?
DeathArrow 4y ago
I think time is the single most valuable resource for any human being. You can own billions of dollars but there's only so much you can live.
thenerdhead 4y ago
> This is a crucial difference between the 1% and the 99%: understanding that you must own your time and the output from it. That you must be able to invest it. That you must be able to define your own world through it. Another reason why "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" or similar titles are best sellers. Because people don't fundamentally grasp the concept of ownership of assets and the leverage that gives you.
black_13 4y ago
[dead]

52 points by gsibble 4y ago

Don’t let people steal your time. There is power in saying “no.” And it’s ok to say it. Try this. Next time someone asks you to do something you don’t want to do, respond with “How am I supposed to do that?” It flips it on them and makes them solve the problem they created. Credit Chris Voss for this. He helped me realize no is fine, and a great way to fulfill a defensive time position. Time is money, but time is also life, so don’t let others steal it from you.

TechBro8615 4y ago
If you are working for a wage, someone is already stealing time from you, they're just paying you nominal amount for it.
- pixelfarmer 4y ago
  But why is someone's time more worth than someone else's? Why are people being paid an amount they cannot even live from (i.e. their time investment is net negative from an economical point of view)? Looks like this value replacement for time has some major flaws and issues ...
  - yetihehe 4y ago
    How would you fix that?
ivanche 4y ago
This! At first I felt uncomfortable saying that to people (and, more or less, all other things about which Chris wrote in his masterpiece) but oh boy it works like a charm every time.
DeathArrow 4y ago
If someone asks “How am I supposed to do that?”, I'm going to explain it to them. If you don't want to do something, simply say: "No."
- ivanche 4y ago
  That is exactly the point of such a question! Your counterpart wants you to spend time and energy to solve their problem, while concurrently you'll think the whole time you have control over situation. If your counterpart is any good, they'll gently push you towards the solution they want implemented. In the end you'll be under impression it's your solution and your relationship with the counterpart was excellent.

SaberTail 4y ago

For centuries, people have advocated for systems where workers keep the fruits of their labors rather than have them appropriated by those with the ownership. They're called "communists" and "socialists".

DeathArrow 4y ago
And communism was such a massive success story with tens of millions of victims...
- Spivak 4y ago
  This is such a pointless discussion. If the economic and political atrocities that occurred under capitalism were listed out it would make the book on communism look like a pamphlet. Shitty people doing shitty things can and will happen under every economic and political system. If you let people convince you that trying to break the cycle of worker exploitation by changing our literally feudalist corporate structure in any way is a one way ticket to the gulag then the only thing that will happen is you’ll be happier with the lot in life that’s been decided for you.
  - corbulo 4y ago
    First: define capitalism Second: list famines
gooseus 4y ago
Yes, history remembers well the efforts of those people, and their results. And if you define who counts as "workers" and who the "owners" are just so, you can also add "fascist" to the list of people who advocate for a similar system (national socialists). It's almost as if rhetoric that promises "workers" a way to take back the fruits of their labor from evil "owners" is a really great way for populist demagogues (on either side) to whip up a Revolution that installs a new groups of oligarchs as a central Party apparatus that effectively owns everything... on behalf of the Workers, of course.
- 4y ago

gopalv 4y ago

"I can always make more money, I can't make more time." This was something a mentor told me, but then described with a lot more nuance around what that means. That money is something you can save or borrow, but time is a much harder thing to borrow or save. That when you are young time feels endless and money cramps you up. Instead of chasing money as a goal from that perspective, to chase the ownership of your time which you are going to exchange for money right now. Not to retire and then chase your passion, but to exercise your passions when you have "young time" instead. Sure, this advice has only been relevant to me after I got past all my debt. After that point, you can turn money into time in interesting ways - you can hire a cook, you can live closer to work for more rent, have a babysitter for sunday morning. But that the purpose of work is not to make money, but to spend your other time well.

pixelfarmer 4y ago
Freedom is freedom given to others. Freedom is often misunderstood as personal/egoistical freedom, but that is not how it works if you want everyone to be as free as possible. For years I include that this means occupying the least amount of time of others with your own agenda, which clearly includes the usual paid work relationship, but also all sorts of other dependencies, most often artificially created ones to actually limit the freedom, like debt for good education etc. These self-proclaimed "free societies" we live in are a lot, but free? There is tons of spare room to the top, while the bottom is much closer than many think.
DeathArrow 4y ago
>"I can always make more money, I can't make more time." True. But with money you can buy other people's time and free your time to do other things instead.

brnewd 4y ago

As software developers we are uniquely positioned to build products or services that can practically run on it's own, freeing up time to do more meaningful things in life. The hard part is coming up with the right idea and sticking to it long enough to bear fruit.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>to build products or services that can practically run on it's own No web service/app that is in the business of making money can just "run on its own", but needs constant development and maintenance. That's why the demand for web devs is so high. If every SW project would be a "fire and forget" experience as you claim, the career wouldn't be nearly as well paid as it is right now. Even phone apps need to be updated or Apple/Google will remove them from the store. SW in the '90's was more or less "fire and forget", but salaries and the demand then were nowhere near as high as they were to day.
- brnewd 4y ago
  If you choose the right niche and use stable libraries there is no need to constantly chase the latest framework or software architecture. A lot of the endless development cycle is self induced work.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    Yeah sure, if you build a simple website/app for a mom&pop shop then yes, but the pay is equally poor and it's a race to the bottom. Even in old cobol codebases coders are still needed to keep up with the changing environment. The big money in SW is always made in apps and services that are scalable, and that needs constanrt engineering effort. SW apps that aren't scalable, are a race to the bottom with low margins and low pay that has been offshored or replaced by the services of SW giants.
    - brnewd 4y ago
      You're not wrong, it is almost the default to end up with a high maintenance stack and the (perceived) need to churn out new features. I've done a few hype driven migrations myself. But if you set out with the primary goal to reduce the amount of time required to run and maintain a software/SaaS/paas/you name it business you can make huge wins in the time department. Maybe I'm just lucky with a niche subscription based platform that doesn't need much tuning and perhaps 10 support emails a day. It doesn't return a FAANG salary but does net me €90k with minimal operational costs. The key is not build that app you don't really need (and indeed requires constant baby sitting to please Apple/Google) not rewrite everything to the latest fad eg Svelte + CockroachDB using edge compute on fly.io.

DeathArrow 4y ago

>For the select few, including the one percent, we are compensated differently. We are paid for the solution, not for the effort. If a solution takes a day or a year, we are compensated the same amount. This difference means that time does not equal money, since the compensation is the same but time investment is differential. But if you do X and win Y money, there's a difference between doing 365 * X in a year and win 365 * Y money and do X in a year and win Y money, so time IS money.

DeathArrow 4y ago

I don't get what the article means by "owning". Buying and owning stock? Starting and owning your own business? Taking part in cooperatives? How does one own time and equity?

DeathArrow 4y ago

I think time is the single most valuable resource for any human being. You can own billions of dollars but there's only so much you can live.

thenerdhead 4y ago

> This is a crucial difference between the 1% and the 99%: understanding that you must own your time and the output from it. That you must be able to invest it. That you must be able to define your own world through it. Another reason why "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" or similar titles are best sellers. Because people don't fundamentally grasp the concept of ownership of assets and the leverage that gives you.

black_13 4y ago

[dead]