Aspirational hourly rate
Setting a personal hourly price far above what you earn, then honoring it
Pick a number for an hour of your time that feels absurd, then run small decisions through it. Driving across town to save twenty dollars fails. So does an evening spent returning a broken purchase. Anything that can be paid for or dropped below the rate gets paid for or dropped, cooking and errands included. People who use it say the value is permission rather than arithmetic: it makes refusing low-value work feel legitimate instead of lazy. Two things limit it. The freed hours have to go somewhere that justifies the number, and the rate only means anything if you hold to it when the sums are small enough to argue about.
People on record
Sorted by strength of stance
Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Naval RavikantDoes it
Angel investor · AngelList and the Naval podcast
His number was 5,000 dollars an hour, chosen before he had real money, and he used it to decide what not to do. Arguing with the electrician failed the test; so did returning a broken speaker. He admits he did those things anyway, and that he still argues about it with his wife and his mother.
Source: nav.al: Set an Aspirational Hourly Rate
Aimed at the same thing
Other entries filed under productivity or focus.
- ProtocolFREE, no cost
Environment design
Change the room instead of relying on willpower
On record from 7 of 62 tracked people: 2 do it, 5 recommend it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Time blocking
Give every hour of the workday a job before the day starts
On record from 7 of 62 tracked people: 5 do it, 2 recommend it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Deep work blocks
Long, scheduled, distraction-free sessions on one cognitively hard task
On record from 6 of 62 tracked people: 5 do it, 1 recommends it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Deliberate wandering
Unplanned, inefficient exploration kept on purpose as the counterweight to efficiency
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 recommend it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Digital declutter
A 30-day break from optional tech, then reintroduce deliberately
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 recommend it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Hard thinking before lunch
Book the mentally demanding work for the morning and stop making big calls late in the day
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 do it
Protocol entry · notes paraphrased from cited sources, quoted excerpts copied from the transcript they link to. Not medical advice. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by anyone listed. How this works.