“Don’t count time - Make time count.”  Dan Kennedy

In seminars across the country, you’ll hear gurus talk about writing down what you’re worth an hour. They come up with all kinds of formulas and ways people can calculate these numbers. In my experience it never seems to work and it actually seems to me that it’s not really true. 

First of all they’ll tell you to calculate your numbers based on an 8 hour work day. The problem I have with this is I don’t think there is really a soul on the planet (or at least very few) that can actually be completely productive in an eight hour day. When I talk about productive hours I’m talking about doing things that are income related and generate money.

What seems to happen so often is we get distracted with phone calls and internet that we are not really doing things that generate a high yield of return. For example, the guy or gal that wants to generate $200k a year based on 220 days a year would require that their time was worth 113.64 an hour. The problem with this is people are not productive for a full eight hours a day. So if the guy wants to generate $200k, they come short if they follow this number based on stats showing productivity reports. I read that a person is better off to multiply the hourly number by three, which would now be 340.92 an hour.

Understanding the difference between a billable hour and a work hour will greatly assist you in this process. By understanding your true number you’ll be more likely to put your time and focus on things that will yield a high return. If you dig further into this you’ll discover that the phone call you take from a friend that lasts twelve minutes just cost you about $68.00, which will change your mind on how you spend your time. Keep this in mind if you’re wanting to achieve your financial goal for the year.

Here’s a formula to figure this out (I got this from Dan Kennedy)

Base earning target:

Divided by 220 days x 8 = 1,760

= base hourly number

Multiply this number by 3 (productivity reasons)

= (What your time is worth an hour.)