Introducing Hourly

What is Hourly?

If you don't currently have an hourly rate you have set for yourself, you need a way to decide if you should do something on your own, or if you should outsource it to someone else. This is extremely important as it's a way to help you respect and prioritize your own time.

For exactly this reason, I built an app called "Hourly" (available here) to help you make that decision.

Why did I build this?

One of Naval's tweets stuck with me more than many of his others. It quantified what I have long believed in terms of balancing the pros and cons of doing something yourself instead of asking someone else to do it for you.

Set and enforce an aspirational hourly rate.

If fixing a problem will save less than your rate, ignore it.If outsourcing a task will cost less than your rate, outsource it.Get comfortable disappointing people whose expectations will eat your life up, one hour at a time.

How does Hourly work?

A simple rule of thumb is that if a task is easy and is comparable in price, (between what it would cost you based on your hourly rate vs what it would cost you to pay a professional), you should just do it yourself.

On the other hand, if a task is difficult and your cost is less than 10x what you would pay the professional - thats right, 10x, then you should just give it to the professional to take care of.

Why 10x? This is a rough "Order of magnitude" rule of thumb that I use for myself, and is certainly up to your own discretion. My mental model is it is 5 parts for all the tools a professional has that is required for the job, 3 parts the skill and efficiency that person has based on the their years of experience and 2 parts the lack of stress for not having to do the job yourself.

Hourly doesn't track or store any of your data. All the data is processed client side, so your data is yours alone!

Check us out!

Having an hourly rate for yourself helps you prioritize your time and do the things that you consider are the most important. Check out Hourly at https://usehourly.netlify.app/. If you have any feature requests or see something puzzling, please let me know on Twitter @raoarjun