Pay money to waste time: ultimate productivity hack?

If you had to pay 20 USD for every additional hour of watching youtube (or netflix) would it make you want to watch less? I bet!

We fail to tie the value of our free time to money. But the time is limited and having more of it has a cost.

How much is your free time worth to you?

You can value your free time based on the opportunity cost or value it based on how much work income you would have to sacrifice to have that time free.

My work has an option to buy “additional time off”. I can buy an additional week of vacation and the cost of it would be spread out over my next 3 paychecks. It seems like 5 days is not a lot, but the costs add up pretty quick, with a hypothetical 50 usd per hour, reclaiming 40 hours would cost you 2000 USD!

Maybe you could freelance, getting more per hour? Or maybe you could learn valuable skills that would open more fulfilling opportunities down the line or spend this time to create new business?

Set a budget for time wasting activities

Of course, not all your free time can be productive. But you also shouldn’t waste the majority of it. Budgeting can help you be intentional about it and reach a happy medium.

You can use a tool such as https://watchlimits.com to set yourself limits or for mobile you can use wellbeing timers.

But what happens when you reach your limit? Maybe you are one of the lucky few who have great self control, but it looks like many people would just go to the settings and extend the limit. And then do it again.

Pay for additional time wasted to make you feel it

Many people really don’t like paying for stuff. For example I might want to go to a free museum, but if I need to pay for it, I’m much less likely to go even if it’s pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things.

Paying for things is definitely a barrier.

This is why I am introducing the “Pay for additional watch time feature” in watchlimits.

The way it works is that you first select what is your rate: how much would you want to pay for each additional 5 minutes wasted? And then once you exceed your limit you can buy “additional time” in 30 minute increments. The “additional” time is used up when you are watching past the limit.

Part of the money goes to climate change prevention.

This feature is still in early development, so please reach out if you are interested in testing it out.

What do you think? Do you think it would be effective for you?