Personal Hack: Write Your Value
Write down your value in a white paper! And from that moment, you will work as if you deserve to have that value.
Money does not mean Value. However, for the economic sake, most of us are working for a living. And we could not live without money. Unless you are at the higher course, I assume Money (income) is Value.
The value I am saying here is your rate per hour. No matter what, where you are working, in the end you can calculate how much you get per hour.
In this post, I want to share
- How to calculate your current rate?
- Why do we have to write down our value?
To make the system work, both you and I must have some kind of faith.
If you do not, that is ok. You can enjoy the reading or simply stop reading 🙂
I believe it works. That’s why I wrote this page. And later I shared this tip with my team. Now I share it with you.
Calculate Your Rate
The formula is simple
Your Rate = (Total Income in a year)/ (Total working hours in a year)
If you have a habit of tracking your income, your working hours (usually freelancers have). You can easily come up with your rate. Or you have already known your rate (you get paid by your customers).
However, if your salary is monthly basic, and your working schedule follows 9-5 pattern, the formula is
Your Rate = (Salary * 12 + (bonuses))/(40*52)
And The Number?
The number depends totally on you. You make that call. If you still do not know, let take (Current Rate) * (1.5-2). The most important part is you have to write a number. At the end of the journey, what important is not the number, it is the process, the progress that the number triggered.
The Why
Because the number gives you a clear picture, a clear image of the person you want to become.
Because it gives you a clear goal. Think about people who make this wish every year: I wish to have a lot of money. Wow, what do you mean “a lot”?
Because it changes the way you look at yourself. Therefore change the way you look at the world.
Because it helps you ask better questions.
The How
You have to track your total income and working hours every month. An excel spreadsheet should be enough to track.
Whenever you go to work or do something, constantly repeat your value (whispering in your head).
For every problem, you have to solve, ask this question
What a guy with {your number} value will do?
That question will trigger a whole new process inside you. What process is it? I do not know. It depends on who you currently are. However, I know that it will bring you to a new level. The key here is repetition. Do not quit at the first time you ask the question.
I am a Software Developer. I will take an example in my field.
You are responsible for solving a bug.
Depending on the process of your organization, however, I would assume these are steps that should be done
- Reproduce the bug with unit test if possible
- Fix the issue
- Write unit test to verify your fix.
- Manual testing
I know there might be more to get a bug done.
Here are some facts I observed
- A few will follow 4 steps
- Some will do steps #2 and #4.
- Some will do steps #2 and #3.
- ….
Question is, who will you be? What will you do as you are now? Then you can practice asking the question.
What if you know what that guy will do, but you decide to drop some steps?
I hope your inner voice will speak: Hey! That is not what that guy will do.
As I said in the beginning, I applied this hack (tip). And I believe it will work. I do not know where it will bring me to. But I do know that I will become a better person in this progress. Since I started, it has given me a lot of courage (writing this post is a big courage). It has helped me shape the way I think when I deal with problems.
I rather give it a go than sit in a corner and do nothing. Right now I am thinking of the moment when I write another post to share the process and the result.
