hour

What’s the Cost of that per Hour? A Simple Guide to Assess Value

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We basically consume things as we live. As one simple way of assessing value when deciding whether or not to buy something, I calculate the price I’ll pay for it by the hour and put it in context of some other things to see how it stacks up. It’s a simple assessment of what the price is, divided by much time it could take up in my life, and compare to something else.

Example

A new tablet. $300, use, on average, over half an hour per day for two years. That’s $300 for at least 365 hours. For simple math, I go for 400 hours so $0.75 per hour. Compare that to a movie without extras that’s about $5 to $7 per hour (Canadian prices). High speed Internet at home that is about $0.50 per hour for me. A full sized piano keyboard that’s currently at $2 per hour. Current four years old desktop that is going under $0.50 per hour.

The call to buy or not is arbitrary pending other factors I’ll go over below, but this gives me a lot of context. I go for it but I commit to keeping that tablet for at least 2 years (and I recall this if I get a new one sooner than 2 years).

 

Other considerations

Of course, other considerations must be taken into account for the calculation:

  1. Use with other things. I may not use my tablet at all times without other things like app purchases. That’s fine. Calculate the other things for what they’re worth. Nobody ever only consumes one thing at all times in their lives.
  2. What else can you get for the same or better value that you might want to get instead? This often stops me as I opt for some other thing.
  3. Compare similar things. This is valuable for new, rare and/or unique things, especially the costly ones like those on vacation. For such things, compare what you can imagine in looking forward to the thing or experience, and compare it to something similar in theme (not necessarily same sort of thing because unique stuff is hard to find similarities for comparison). For considering things or experiences you were purchasing again, ask if that was worth the money at that rate.
  4. Stuff you can’t calculate. There is a lot of things you can’t calculate, like the social value to make new friends, or see some person you’re interested in getting to know better among a group of friends at a movie, that can overrule, or be worth the value of the something more costly, or novelty of a new experience that could lead to more things, a fun memory, etc. That’s great! Go for it! Just keep the total in check for what you can afford in your life. That’s a bigger calculation that’s not actually hard to estimate, but you’d need to know some details about how much you spend, save, want to save, etc. Keeping enough financial data about yourself is the hard part there, but I have that to help me.
  5. Other things still. Whatever you can dream up to consider, whether to overrule or help make the decision more systematic and rational. Sure, add it in! It is your calculation!
  6. Go with your guts if all else fails. As stated.

 

It’s far from a perfect system or model for deciding whether or not to buy things, but for starters, I think it’s a damn good one!

Definition: Socially Prescribed Perfectionism

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Socially Prescribed Perfectionism

Perfectionistic motivations due to the fact that important people in one’s life expect one to be perfect.

  • Wikipedia

 

That’s not quite the definition I got from the TEDRadio Hour podcast episode below. It was more like

 

A definition of perfectionism people get from seeing others’ curated posts on social media.

 

That is, people selectively posts only what they want to tell about their lives, which is usually a vast imbalance of the good things, often exaggerated for falsified, and others who view enough of it start setting that amalgamation of all they see as their idea of a perfect life, as if someone had it and they didn’t, when even the truth is those who posted all that stuff don’t even have a life close to it. It’s a perfection that’s socially prescribed to them via social media.

 

 

Definition: Slow Reading

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Slow Reading

The intentional reduction in the speed of reading, carried out to increase comprehension or pleasure.

 

The name is obvious for what it is. The impetus to do so in this day and age of hurrying through things, and slow reading’s benefits, are less obvious, as described in the TEDRadio Hour podcast below.

Vocabulary: Hard Problem of Consciousness (and Qualia)

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Hard Problem of Consciousness

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why sentient organisms have qualia or phenomenal experiences — how and why it is that some internal states are felt states, such as heat or pain, rather than unfelt states, as in a thermostat or a toaster.

 

Basically, how and why do conscious organisms have experiences, with feelings some of the time, while some don’t.

 

Qualia

In philosophy, qualia are individual instances of subjective, conscious experience.

 

From this enlightening TEDRadio Hour podcast

Definition: Art Amendment

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Art Amendment

Art that modifies biased, misleading, and/or symbolically inappropriate art, rather than destroy or remove that art, so what that art wasn’t fair about isn’t forgotten like it was never done or might not happen again.

  • There’s next to nothing online about this I was able to find in a quick Internet search.

 

Except that I know it came from the TEDTalk below by Titus Kaphar, and I LOVE the concept!

 

With more on how art changes us from the TEDRadio Hour podcast episode below…

 

But here’s what you do with this, think about how you’d amend art that is biased or misleading!

Of course, that’d require you to be aware enough to recognize what art needed amendment.

Then be creative for how you can amend it.

I’ll refrain from giving examples of art amendment only because it would be fully of judgmental controversy. I would have to pass judgment on what art I thought needed amending, and why. Then I’d have to give ideas of how I thought I could amend it, which people would judge to see if it would make the art any better. That’s after they’d judge my judgment on the art needing amending and my reason/s for it.

Now, I’m not shy about courting controversy, but I am strategic about it. A blog post where it’s hard to have a conversation about it isn’t my idea of such a venue. Put me in a crowd where I can have face to face dialogue? Then hell yeah! Bring it!

That’s not to suggest I’d be looking for a combative scene, hoping to win or something. No. That’s where I’d love to engage and see what becomes of it all, whether I’m right, wrong, or we all would come up with something better than any of us might have been able to come up with on our own. That’s my kind of courting controversy!