What do you regret undervaluing?
How undervaluing a certain commodity can have damaging consequences.
What did you undervalue at the beginning of your career, but value a lot now?
Quick answer
My time.
Detailed answer
In some ways, I’m still a work in progress around valuing my time. This is particularly true professionally. I’m not great at outsourcing tasks – but I’m better about setting boundaries with clients around my time.
Your journey to raising rates (or negotiating a salary increase) may also be filled with self-doubt. Perhaps you justify current rates/salary because there’s an element of self-doubt that kicks. You worry that people will either believe you charge too much and that you’ll lose all your clients (or that your employer will think less of you for negotiating). For the self-employed, undercharging results in taking on more assignments/clients to achieve the same financial outcome.
But this doesn’t only apply to your professional life.
What’s really changed is how I value my time in my personal life – which is directly correlated to earning more, but also taking on more, as my career grows.
Here’s an example about how I switched my thinking on valuing time in my personal life.
About eight years ago a woman I know in personal finance, and a fellow New Yorker, made a comment about how she believes doing your own laundry is a waste of time. It floored me! Keep in mind, many of us New Yorkers go to laundromats in order to do laundry, so it is much more time intensive situation compared to doing laundry in your home. Anyway, I mentally scoffed because why would I pay someone ~$40+ just to do my laundry when I could easily handle it myself for about $10.
Well, fast forward about two years when I started writing the first Broke Millennial book. I was also working a full-time job and still doing side hustles (babysitting, blogging and other writing gigs) on top of all that. One week, I was completely maxed out and decided to just go ahead and try drop-off service laundry. (You drop it off and pick it up either at the end of the day or the next day all washed and folded.) Life changing! To be able to buy back about three hours of my time was worth spending the $40, especially because I was generating more money in that time than I was paying to outsource the task.
Now, let me just clarify that you don’t always have to be generating money in order to justify outsourcing a task – whatever it may be. It can also be about having self-care time!
P.S. For fellow New Yorkers, or anyone coming to visit, here’s a hot tip on discounted tickets and exchanging time for spending less money! I used to stand in line for hours, often early in the morning, to snag a rush ticket to a show. These days, you can do digital lotteries with TodayTix or Broadway Direct. Since Broadway reopened, I’ve won tickets to Hamilton, Six, and the Lehman Trilogy through the digital lotteries.
To Recap:
Our own time (and setting boundaries to protect it) is often undervalued early in our careers. It can be hard to change that mentality.
You don’t have to be generating money to justify outsourcing a task. It can just be about freeing up an hour to have self-care time.
The second point about outsourcing makes so much sense!
Hit the mail on the head w/this Erin!!! Hands down the most difficult but most freeing life lesson learned.