What Is Your Time Actually Worth?

I keep having this dream. Not the same dream exactly, but the same story.

I’m working in corporate fashion again.

The building is different.

The company is different. Sometimes the job is a little different. Sometimes I recognize people and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I’m doing something completely bizarre that somehow still feels very much like work. But the pattern is always the same.

I start working for a company. And then I work, work, and work. A few weeks go by.

I’m there every day. I’m doing projects…. solving problems. Creating big things.

Sometimes I’m working early in the morning. Sometimes late at night. Sometimes on the weekend.

And then suddenly, somewhere in the dream, I have this realization:

WAIT! I’ve been working here for three or four weeks. I haven’t been paid.

And then I wake up.

I’ve know this dream so well… because I’ve actually lived it. It’s a nightmare.

Because the truth is, for years, working in corporate fashion, working overtime wasn't really considered overtime.

It was just…work.

Everyone did it.

You stayed late.

You worked on the weekend. You answered emails when you got home. You carried your laptop home and pulled it out after dinner.

You stayed up until 2 or 3AM in the morning making mood boards for the presentation the next day.

You squeezed out one more idea. One more round of development. One more revision. One more thing. And then you did it again the next day.

At one point, I actually tried to calculate what all of those hours were worth. I started with what I thought was a very conservative number: 3 extra hours a day.

Not 5. Not the nights in the office that stretched past midnight. Not the weekends. Not the times I worked even longer. Just three hours a day.

I subtracted vacation days and did the math over years of working.

And depending on the hourly rate I used, I landed somewhere around $260,000 in unpaid time.

And honestly? That number shocked me. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that $260,000 wasn't really the shocking part. The shocking part was how easy it was to give away that much time without really thinking about it.

We are constantly being told to watch our money. Don't buy the $7 coffee…..Pack your lunch….don't eat out. Save $100 here. Cut $50 there.

And listen I completely understand it. Small financial choices do add up. They do!

But I can't help wondering: What about the things we give away that don't show up on a bank statement?

What is three hours of your life worth?

The Saturday you spent working worth?

How about the sleep you lost worth?

What is the creative energy you used to make someone else's company more successful worth?

or the hour you spent answering emails instead of being present with your family worth?

What is the idea you didn't have because your brain was completely fried worth?!!

We talk about money because money is easy to measure.

Time, energy, creativity isn't. And yet those things are often the most expensive things we have.

I think about the way I used to describe my creative energy.

I felt like I was constantly squeezing a rainbow out of a rag. There was always something beautiful inside me to give. And I gave it. Again and again. Until there wasn't much left. And that cost me more than an hourly wage could ever really capture.

Because when you give away your energy, you're not just giving away the hour you're currently working. You're giving away everything that hour could have become.

Maybe you could have had dinner with your family without thinking about tomorrow's presentation… or you could have worked on the tiny idea that eventually became the thing you're building now.

Maybe you could have simply done nothing. And sometimes doing nothing is incredibly valuable.

This is one of the things I've been thinking about a lot as I continue building Dye on the Side. Because now I am much more aware of the relationship between my time and my money. I can't just casually give away three hours anymore.

If I'm teaching a workshop, there is the time I'm standing in front of the room….but there is also the preparation, the sourcing, the emails, the packing, the driving, the setup, the cleanup, the follow-up.

If I'm creating something, there is the hour you see and all the invisible hours behind it.

My time, energy, creativty, wellbeing is part of everything. And maybe that's the bigger lesson my weird little recurring dream is trying to remind me of.

Don't forget to pay yourself. Not just financially. Pay yourself in time, rest, boundaries, creative space, care.

Because there is a strange kind of cultural conditioning that tells us that being incredibly busy means we're valuable.

That working late means we're dedicated. That answering immediately means we're good at our jobs. That giving more means we're a better employee. And I can’t help but to hold space for the truth that most of us don’t have a choice to not do this.

But I'm starting to think we should ask a different question.

Not: How much money am I saving?

But: How much of my life am I giving away?

Because a $7 coffee might add up. But so does one extra hour at work over 10 years is 204,000 minutes, 3,400 hours, 142 days given away unpaid.

Is what I'm giving away actually worth what I'm getting back?

I'm pretty sure my dream isn't really about the trauma of corporate fashion,

I think it's about finally realizing that my time was never free.

I just forgot to put a price on it.