I remember hearing Naval Ravikant say on podcast how we should set an aspirational hourly rate on our time, even if it’s not for work. So that if going to the store to exchange a broken product saves you less than your aspirational hourly rate, you shouldn’t bother doing it. Give that product away. Or discard it.
No one is going to value you more than you value you. Set a high personal hourly rate, and stick to it. When I was young, I decided I was worth a lot more than the market thought I was worth. And I started treating myself that way. Factor your time into every decision. Say you value your time at $100 an hour. If you decide to spend an hour driving across town to get something, you’re effectively throwing away $100. Are you going to do that? - Naval
That way you value your time in the present, based on what the future you would do. Bringing the future into the present, making the future your current reality. That’s why it’s “aspirational”. To achieve that future goal that you aspire towards, you got to start somewhere, isn’t it? Fake it till you make it. It’s okay to play mind games with yourself, in this case. It’s just another way of positive affirmation and visualisation.
Your hourly rate should seem absurdly high. Set a very high aspirational hourly rate for yourself, and stick to it. It should seem and feel absurdly high. If it doesn’t, it’s not high enough. Whatever you pick, my advice is to raise it. My aspirational rate was $5,000/hr. Fast-forward to your wealthy self and pick an intermediate hourly rate. Before I had any real money and you could hire me, I set an aspirational rate of $5,000 an hour. - Naval
I love the idea of the hourly rate being absurdly high. It’s aligned to how I feel about S.M.A.R.T. goals, that the goals that truly matter to us, our dreams and aspirations, shouldn’t have to be attainable and realistic. Dream so big, that wherever you land along the trajectory will still blow your mind even if you don’t end up reaching the original destination. That’s why I made this absurd plan to earn one million dollars per year by end-2020. @abrahamKim , being a fellow Naval fan, was curious after reading my post and asked what my aspirational hourly rate might be.
Good question. I never quite sat down to do that. So here goes:
My current hourly rate for consultancy work is $300/hr, but with my $1mil ARR goal that I have, that translates to around $500/hr. But that’s based on working all the work days in a year - say, all 261 work days in 2019, at 8 hours per day. I actually want to work much less per day and per year - around 4 hours, and maybe only half the year, depending on how you define ‘work’. So if we go with that calculation, we get about $2,000/hr.
Wow. Two thousand dollars per hour. That’s ASPIRATIONAL indeed. But hey, why not? Not quite at Naval’s level, but high enough for me to feel absurd, at this stage.
Dream for the stars, land on Mars.