I have been thinking a lot lately about value. What it means to me, what it means in my life, my work, the purchases I make, the time I spend working, hanging out with friends, or just reading a book. It’s strange how as you get older, you start to give credence to ideas that you previously wouldn’t have spent much time thinking about. This is one of those things.
Having left a corporate job six years ago, my entire livelihood working online has been about providing value. (Corporate work didn’t care if I valued my “customer”; I wasn’t paid to have such insight) If I don’t provide enough value to others, I don’t get a paycheck; it’s that simple. My primary website is a good example of that. The Good Human now gets over 100,000 visitors a month, has thousands of subscribers through RSS and email, and has 11,100 followers on Twitter. It has become a brand that I need to work on every single day. For a website that started back on the Blogger platform on a whim, this is pretty amazing. I am still blown away by the community that has been built around the site. That’s not to toot my own horn; I am literally astounded that it happened at all. But were I not providing value, it wouldn’t have been a success. For six years and 2,300+ articles, I have done my best to provide value to the reader. I know I need to continue to do it or they will disappear tomorrow – I can’t afford for that to happen. So I strive to provide value a few days a week in hopes that long-time readers continue to read and new readers climb on board. My work is providing value, and I try to be good at it.
But what about in my own life?
Do I subscribe to the concept that value is important? Sometimes. I don’t always use my time wisely. I sometimes get lost on the internet, blindly clicking from one link to another. I sometimes buy a product that I know won’t last that long. I sometimes do something just because someone else thinks it’s a good idea, even if I realize I don’t. I sometimes watch TV shows I don’t want to watch, read books I don’t want to read, and attend events I don’t want to attend just because someone else thought they were good/worthwhile/important. I am accepting someone else’s definition of value and rolling with it.
I need to work on this.
And I am getting better. I am better at saying no thank you. I am better at standing up for myself. I am better at making the decision that is right for me, regardless of what anyone else thinks. I am getting better. I am bringing more value into my life.
If I go out of my way to provide value for others, I should be willing to do the same for myself, yes?
I hope you said yes.
And I hope you do the same.
Don’t live anyone else’s life, live your own. Your choices, your needs, your desires, your wants – they are yours to make and yours to live with. Bring value to your own life if you have been too busy trying to provide value to everyone else that you have been neglectful. It’s not selfish, it’s healthy.
Think about it.
One definition of value is a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged. This week I decided that the money that I receive for the services I provide in my salaried job is not equivalent to the time, energy, fear, frustration and mismatch in personal values that it “costs” me. In some ways this is a relief to me but I find it difficult to make such a choice because of the effect on my family. I have to believe that the patience that I may regain for my children en the intimacy and support that I hope my husband will receive is a a fair exchange for the things that they will have to compromise on. Lets assume I’m worth it 🙂
Another way off assessing value is time.
Time is my best way of analyzing value as I see time as being the most valuable thing. Sometimes it is better to say no to someone or pay for a service (even one that you can do yourself) if it would take you more time to complete then you value your time at.
Therefore, if you were to give your time a financial value per hour you could easily assess the cost to time ratio of a service. If it will take you 2 hours to paint a wall but cost $20 to have it painted then you would employ the contractor if you value 2 hours of your time more than $20. This will obviously depend on your personal situations and on;y apply to certain events.
Time is also for me precious and yet most of my life I have treated it with disrespect or negligence. Despite the content of my previous post, with its reference to remuneration, I realise now that thinking about time in terms of monetary value doesn’t ring true for me. Its more about its relationship to peace and joy (or the lack there of). The experiences, services or goods that my salary buys cannot compensate me for the missed hours. This year I will become 47 years old – the same age as my mother when she died of cancer. She always dreamed of ‘later’ when she would ‘have time to……’. I guess I have decided not to wait until later.
Thank you for this post. I spent about two hours yesterday at Goodwill looking for a dress, pair of shoes, just something. Going to Goodwill is something I do often, and usually walk out with at least four or five items, many of which are simply for the moment. I wear them once or twice, then recycle them back in a year or so. Yesterday there were at least 6 dresses I could have bought, but after just returning from a trip where I felt great because i had only my favorite outfits to wear, I really wanted to proceed with caution. What was interesting is I didn’t just walk away from the store, I kept returning to the same sections, hoping to find something that was “me”, but found myself thinking long and hard about every item I picked up. I spent a lot of time there, which I might have thought of as a waste of time, but I gained valuable insight into my vision of myself, which I think will add tremendous value in my life as I work each day to carefully craft and support that vision. But I’ll probably continue to go to Goodwill on a regular basis.