I'm living in a jungle, man.
I have a huge front garden that connects with the backyard, I guess it's one of the perks of living in the middle of nowhere in Mexico, outside of the city noise and stress, but close enough in case there's an emergency. I pay in rent less than what someone in the first world spends in a weekend, so I guess that's another perk.
The downside is, well living in a third world country where the gardener comes at will, even if I call him every day he will just ignore my calls and leave me on seen on whatsapp, effectively rendering my garden into a jungle. It's the rainy season and I have to pay him ten bucks every two weeks so my 200 square meter garden doesn't look like an abandoned lot. But he comes down my street every time he needs money, not when his customers need him, and since I have four dogs that love taking a dump in the high grass, you can see why this is an issue.
Which is why I got a lawn mower. It's nothing fancy, it's worth a hundred bucks, and I might have made a mistake by buying this one instead of the $250 fancier one, but I will learn how to upkeep my garden and if I'm successful, perhaps I'll get the expensive one.
I mean, look at my garden... I'm pretty sure I will find some pokemon hiding in the tall grass any moment now. You can barely see the lawn mower and you will definitely not see my dogs' poop until you step on them.
Mu girlfriend was 100% against my idea of taking care of our garden by myself, I am famous for procrastinating and then nagging about not having time to do shit, so she might have a point. But given that my father and my in laws have a garden roughly the same size as mine, and given we all pay from ten to twenty bucks every two weeks well... this purchase was a no-brainer, even at the expense of having an argument with my girlfriend who hates having a jungle in the backyard.
But I mean, why would I just call the guy and pay him money to do something I could do myself?
This is when my business mindset comes into play:
In order to keep a good track of how much is your time worth, and how much are you willing to pay someone to do something for you, you have to set some values and establish some ground rules, I will use fake, round numbers to make this easy to follow.
Let's say I earn $5 USD per hour doing freelance work, and I get 8 hours of work per day. The gardener charges $10 USD for this job and it takes him one hour because he's experienced and he knows his business, he will also leave the garden perfectly whereas if I do the same job, it will take me two hours and it is very likely that the garden will not be pristine, at least the first few times I do this - I mean, how hard can it be, right? <- wrong by the way, but more about that later.
It costs me two hours of work to have my garden perfect for two weeks, because I earn 5 bucks per hour.
It's like watching TV. If you waste the time that you could be using to generate money, it is effectively costing you money to watch TV. That is in case you have work to do and someone to pay you for it. If you had a boss that paid you by the hour, with no limit on how much you could work, every second spent playing vidya would be effectively costing you money. Every night out will cost you the beer money plus the money you stopped generating if you spent that time working.
But the truth is, this mindset can easily take you to not being able to have free moments, having a good time with friends or family, thinking that you could be making money instead of wasting your time talking about dogs and a mutual friend with your cousin.
The thing is, when you have spare time and you engage in hobbies in your spare time - something everyone should do - you are not wasting time, you are freeing your mind and relaxing so that the hours you spend working are effective and efficient.
This is why I decided to buy the lawn mower. Because the one or two hours I spend taking care of my yard can be taken as time for relaxing, reflection and thinking, while saving some money by not paying the gardener, and also doing some exercise. In a matter of 2 months this garden tool will be fully paid for if I had paid the gardener to do the work, and I will end up spending the same amount of money but I have a lawn mower now, and I will not have to spend a dime in the future for this.
Except for what my time costs that is, which is $5 dollars per hour if we go by the example above, but that is only valid if I have work to do, and someone who pays for it.
Right now I don't have time, I wish my days would last 30 hours so that I could sleep 8 and work 16 without neglecting my girlfriend, my dogs and my family, but that's just wishful thinking. Instead, I will take this couple hours to take care of my garden and see this as exercise time with some thinking and some relaxing along the way.
I am also not a big fan of just calling the guy. No sir, I can do everything around here and if I can't, I will learn how to do it. As I mentioned above, this costs me money in terms of my time is worth more than the gardener or the electrician, but that only applies if I was working non-stop 16 hours a day, where every hour wasted means losing potential income.
I don't work 16 hrs a day, and I definitely don't have someone who will pay me for every hour worked during the day. So I'll just stick to making money when the time for making money comes, and I'll do my home chores when I am not working - instead of, say, watch TV.
What about you? How are you measuring your overall time and money making time?