My goal is to bring in $1,000 more than expected this month as an experiment to test the limit of the value I can capture from myself and to gauge unused potential as measured by monetary value. The initial formula for this was to replace a diminishing habit with a beneficial one, do more high paying tasks by outsourcing my low paying ones, getting rid of one thing I am paying for, and get paid for one thing I already have or do.
Over the past couple of days I have been auditing myself and my life for “value thieves,” any thing I allow or invite to diminish my personal value. The list I identified includes
- An extra car we don’t need or use
- Unproductive conversations
- Distracting emails
- Poor Spending
- Bank Fees
This was the list of the ones that were easiest to collect. I feel fairly sure that these are not uncommon, so hopefully this forms a template for an actionable public audit. Cumulatively these have cost me about $800 this month, which is an huge obstacle to my personal value experiment.
Alternatively I also created a list of methods I had available to me to (legally) increase my value this week.
- Meaningful blogging and journalism
- Empty labor pipeline early
- Sell extra car
- Nap daily
Note that my measurement of value is not limited to finance but also to the number of people I can impact in a amount of time. I aim to research and write prolifically to become a source of educational and actionable information. As a technological consultant, it’s essentially providing my financial model to my social life to provide similar benefits.
So far my additional net income has gotten halfway to breaking even by having maintenance tasks replaced by high value work and being able to serve my clients well, but providing this labor is no way to become financially or socially wealthy. That being said, it’s a more certain and controllable way to reach my $1,000 goal than speculating the sale of my car, especially in conjunction with removing my value thieves.