This
Tweet from @Austen popped up yesterday:
“People seem surprised when you pay $30/month for email (Superhuman), $8/month for a note taking/second brain app (Roam Research), etc.
There are 160 working hours in a month (for me much more), so it costs about 25 cents an hour for two enormous productivity boosts.”
—
Naturally because it’s something I agree with it’s getting shared here :P
In my opinion not enough people follow this advice.
I struggle with it too. For example I just signed up for
Mangools ($29/mth) over ahrefs ($179/mth) as I couldn’t justify the extra cost.
It’s a question of “Does the extra value justify the price difference”. In this case it was a no.
But in many cases it should be a yes, but the only thing you see is the cost.
The amount of times someone posts about wanting to use a second-rate booking system to save $9 on Calendly blows me away.
If something is going to save you time, it’s worth paying for. You have to work out where your threshold is though.
Would you pay $29 to save an hour?
$59?
$99?
I’m probably around the $49 mark but should be higher.
When you’re looking at investing in a new thing, ask yourself:
- Will the cost justify the time saved at $X per hour?
- Am I so busy right now that I NEED to save some time
If you’re super busy AND don’t want to pay for something that will save you time, you’re setting yourself up to break.
That’s where I got to in around 2014 - breaking point.
Since then I’ve tried to be better at spending money where it makes sense. It’s still a battle though.
And on this note, I have my
Superhuman onboarding this week. I’ll let you know how it goes.
