adding to this: fold related tasks together. let your commute be your workout (i.e. jog or bike home from work). if you want to cook a good meal some evening, but also leave time open for socializing, then invite your friends over to cook with you. if you want to learn woodworking and don’t like the furniture in your home, then learn by building new furniture.
that last bit is where the “trade money for time” scheme risks being derailed. in the end, you’re never strictly exchanging money for time — outside of life-extension efforts. you’re identifying an opportunity to replace your time spent doing A with time spent doing B, at a cost of C. the more you dislike A (doing the dishes), probably the more you should be willing to pay for replacing it with B (reading a book while the dishwasher runs). but if A isn’t a chore… if it’s a hobby you enjoy for its own sake (woodworking), then it might not ever make sense to outsource it.
because most of us specialize in only one form of production, we think of these trades as me giving money and receiving a preferable use of time. once you’re dealing in productive hobbies, it’ll make sense to treat this as an exchange that can go in either direction. if your hobby is to woodwork, but you live next to Ikea, in might be a reasonable course of action to spend $200 on lumber, a few evenings turning that into a table, and then selling the table for $150. it looks dumb on the surface but each trade individually could make sense (my enjoyment from this hobby is >= $200; my benefit from this table is ⇐ $150).
then you get to the point where it’s worth considering nonfungible intangibles — like sentimentality. that table from above might be worth $150 to a buyer off the street, but your grandma might consider the thing “priceless”. she would never buy it from you for what it’s actually worth to her, because doing so destroys some of the sentiment she attaches to the table. so gift the table to her. she’ll be inclined to pay it back in other forms (hosting dinners, etc — chances are she’s more than covered the cost of the table by raising you though so arguably you’re paying back a > $150 debt with the gift).
adding to this: fold related tasks together. let your commute be your workout (i.e. jog or bike home from work). if you want to cook a good meal some evening, but also leave time open for socializing, then invite your friends over to cook with you. if you want to learn woodworking and don’t like the furniture in your home, then learn by building new furniture.
that last bit is where the “trade money for time” scheme risks being derailed. in the end, you’re never strictly exchanging money for time — outside of life-extension efforts. you’re identifying an opportunity to replace your time spent doing A with time spent doing B, at a cost of C. the more you dislike A (doing the dishes), probably the more you should be willing to pay for replacing it with B (reading a book while the dishwasher runs). but if A isn’t a chore… if it’s a hobby you enjoy for its own sake (woodworking), then it might not ever make sense to outsource it.
because most of us specialize in only one form of production, we think of these trades as me giving money and receiving a preferable use of time. once you’re dealing in productive hobbies, it’ll make sense to treat this as an exchange that can go in either direction. if your hobby is to woodwork, but you live next to Ikea, in might be a reasonable course of action to spend $200 on lumber, a few evenings turning that into a table, and then selling the table for $150. it looks dumb on the surface but each trade individually could make sense (my enjoyment from this hobby is >= $200; my benefit from this table is ⇐ $150).
then you get to the point where it’s worth considering nonfungible intangibles — like sentimentality. that table from above might be worth $150 to a buyer off the street, but your grandma might consider the thing “priceless”. she would never buy it from you for what it’s actually worth to her, because doing so destroys some of the sentiment she attaches to the table. so gift the table to her. she’ll be inclined to pay it back in other forms (hosting dinners, etc — chances are she’s more than covered the cost of the table by raising you though so arguably you’re paying back a > $150 debt with the gift).