Your time, attention, presence, knowledge, desires, love, physical strength, health, work, beliefs, talents, etc. How do you value the use of those personal attributes?
You don’t have value it in money, you could simply say — my physical presence with X is less valuable than my presence with Y at this moment. My joy playing piano as a professional is more than the joy of seeing a movie at this moment.
Our basis for understanding the value of a thing can be based on how we value that thing — at this moment. If someone wants more of a thing from us, we use our current assessment of value to determine if we’ll give more or if we’ll impose some kind of cost for supplying more of that thing someone wants.
Suppose someone wants more of your time, you might say “yes, but you’ll have to wait until next week.” In that example, you’re happy to supply more time, but since your time at this moment is worth more doing something else, you impose a cost — a wait time.
In the opposite direction, suppose someone wants more time from you and you have excess time to give at this moment. You might say “yes, I’ll be right over.” You’re happy to give more time since you don’t have any other productive use for that time. You’ll be over right away, there’s almost no cost to the person asking for more time.
A word of caution though — these are frameworks for understanding value and decision-making. Ultimately, you and I are both humans. Our emotions, gut microbiome, health, worldview, you name — it all becomes noise in our calculus. We, you and I, don’t always operate in a way to maximize our personal effectiveness — that’s a reason I write this blog, to help me! Therefore, when our sense of value conflicts with another’s, and conflict erupts, it’s time to shed this mental model and start deep listening!
The takeaways are:
Value is relative to your alternatives,
Everybody has needs and generally want them met,
How much of yourself you’re willing to give is subject to your perception of value at this moment; and,
You’re not as rational as you want to think you are — you’re only human.
If you’re reading this sentence, at this moment you decided supplying me your time and your cognitive energy is worth more than the alternative. Thank you.