The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

3

The single calculation to find out what you really make

Do you remember fractions? I learned them back in fourth grade in a moldy classroom with flickering florescent lights in my elementary school. Pink chalk dust scrawled across blackboards showing us how one-half can be written as ½ or three-quarters can be written as ¾ . . . with 3 being the numerator and 4 being the denominator. As in “I sat on the couch in sweatpants watching TV all Saturday night and ate ¾ of a pepperoni pizza.”

Well, the Harvard salary of $120,000 is a fraction, too.

It means you make:

That sounds great, but there’s one little problem with that fraction. Nobody works every single hour of the year. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense talking about how much money you make over an entire year of work. That makes salaries sound like giant cardboard paychecks handed out on New Year’s Eve with hearty handshakes. “Congrats, Sampson. You blew away your sales numbers for the past twelve months. After a solid year of grinding it out every single day, you have finally earned this—your annual paycheck.”

But it doesn’t work that way.

We don’t earn big fat dollars for years of work.

We earn tiny little dollars for hours of work.

When I had my first babysitting job I worked for $5/hour. Pretty sweet deal for watching Alf with a couple of eight-year-olds while eating unlimited cheese strings. Then I did yardwork for my parents for $10/hour. That was generous of them, since the going rate for raking leaves and shoveling driveways was lower than that. Although I did help them avoid pesky health insurance by getting paid under the table. Some of my friends did construction for $12/hour. Some lifeguarded at pools for $16/hour. Point is: Every single job is paid by the hour. Some are forty hours a week, some are eighty, some are one hundred and twenty. But no matter how much money you’re making, the numerator is how much you get and the denominator is how much you work.

Every single job is paid by the hour.

Harvard Business School grads make double or triple the money a lot of people make, but they often work double or triple the hours, too. When you work that much, it’s harder to find time to shovel the driveway, play with your kids, or plant your garden, so maybe you hire people on the cheap to do those things for you. You will still have fun! Frankly, the money you’re making can afford luxury vacations and expensive restaurants. You may have even more fun. But there’s less time for fun. Your third bucket disappears.

Think about whether it’s important to you to feel the pride of a freshly shoveled driveway, the joy of watching your kids discover a new word, or see the tulips you planted in the fall finally bloom in the spring.

There’s nothing wrong with either life.

But think about the life you want.