5:20 am: When the alarm goes off at 5:00, having a “daily” blog definitely is motivation to have to get up. I’d definitely be asleep otherwise. BTW, Happy Chinese New Year!
Writer’s note: This morning’s choice of topic is another one from scratch, meaning it’s not one that I decided to excerpt from a source. It would really make it simple to copy something out of a book this morning, but sometimes I like the challenge of forcing myself to develop an important idea, knowing it’s possible to totally screw it up before the children wake up and I have to publish something.
I’ve got to approach it like I’m talking to you.
Let’s get going…
A quiet day at Versailles (1989): Photo by Challen Yee
Worth more than what you are paid?
At some point in your professional life, whether you are a 13 year old janitor making $1.75 per hour or a high tech professional making a six-figure income, you may ask yourself, “Can I earn more than this?”
To answer your answer simply, as Jim Rohn liked to say “Of course.”
The trick is, knowing why and how should anyone pay you more?
In my experience as manager, I’ve always been fascinated with how much people need to spend at work, spending 50-120 hours per week in a cubicle doing what the corporate bosses need and want them to do. And by-an-large, employed workers need to believe what they are doing is comparable to what they are getting paid otherwise they’d think it unjust and when there’s that kind of sustained feeling of disparagement something is bound to break.
Working for a start up company may be motivating for some people, I know it was for me back in the 1990’s, but it needed to be tied into an underlying sense of confidence in the company (your bosses) knowing what they are doing. Luck- we cannot quantify, so it would be, IMHO, not such a great aspect of success to and your hat on.
Compensation of Time on the weekends and evenings are not equal to a regular hour at work during the week.
I believe that a leader will design his own comp schedule time own benefits if he doesn’t believe the comp and PTO time are adequately meeting the needs of a hard working member.
To me it’s simple, I see the value of a productive worker putting in her time, sacrificing her role as a wife and mother, or as a man, a husband or a father. Even if you are single, you may not even realize how valuable you time can be, so you, like I was, able to sink an enormous amount of time into doing the work of a cubicle dweller.
In a small private company at the time, no one was working hourly, so there were no “over time” wages. Sometimes there were incentive bonuses, but that can vary greatly from company to company and sometimes a mere token.
As a manager, I used to give my own comp time to the people who worked under me, because it was something I could control without getting into additional compensation. Having a flexible schedule, I realized even a single guy, is part of a good plan especially for working mother’s who happened to be a significant part of my staff.
In a better model, the greater the value of services, the greater the rewards should be. This can also be applied for those who are fortunate enough to build a business that can generate residual income or those who can develop skills that are the income generating market is willing to pay you more for.
Residual income, just one simple way to understand it, is the kind of income you get when you no longer need to “do the work” because you already “did the work”. Your product or e-service is now working for you on autopilot filling up your bank account while you are on vacation or sleeping.
The point I want to make today is, if you think you are earning peanuts for doing your job, I believe, you are right. But the more insidious truth is, even if you think you are getting paid adequately, that does not mean you have tapped into your own value or could not develop the skills that could compensate you at much greater levels and thereby improve your life in a way that does not destroy it.
Obviously, if you’ve made it successful already, I’m not writing to you, however, I know one thing is for certain, once you start, you cannot stop setting goals to achieve something greater. A relatively new concept is that of a self-sustaining philanthropy which is exciting as well as a positive aspect of self-directed capitalism.
The last thought to mess with your mind is this:
Have you equated what you do to a form of “ditch-digging” whether physically or intellectually? Then you have just stepped on the doorway to the reality that, yes, there is a reason people get paid a lot more than you and the market is willing to pay them-just like they are willing to pay you for what you do now.
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7:01 (publish)
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Like, share and comment. Today, especially, be share-ful if you’ve received value or learned something from this article.
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I’ll see you… on the next page
Challen Yee