the napkin problem
If you want to scale your value as an individual, you have to shift your mindset from selling time to selling value.
This is the problem almost every contractor or gig worker runs into. The default measurement is hours. One hour = this many dollars. There’s practicality to it. Time is an easy proxy. But everyone who’s worked this way knows: hours ≠ value.
Sometimes the task flows fast. Sometimes you’re blocked — VPN down, client service broken, waiting on someone else. Do you charge for that blocked time? Some say yes, some say no. My view: if they’ve booked your time and it’s their fault you can’t deliver, you’ve still leased that slot. They’ve taken it off your table.
But the deeper issue: not all hours are created equal.
If I’m contracted for 40 hours and can finish the work in 2, what then? Am I supposed to stretch it out for fairness? Am I punished for being good at what I do? Someone slower bills the full 40, and I’m supposed to bill 2? That doesn’t make sense.
And this is where we trip the wire of fairness. Humans hate inequality. It’s primal — like the monkey who’s perfectly happy with one banana until the monkey next to him gets three. Then suddenly it’s injustice. In the same way, clients expect to “see” time spent. If you deliver early, it feels wrong to them, even if the value is greater.
time is not the asset
The truth is: time is your scarcest resource. Money regenerates. Time doesn’t. If you’re trading time for money, the power imbalance is already against you — unless the money vastly outweighs the slice of life you’re giving up.
That’s why the real move is to stop thinking in hours and start thinking in outcomes. What’s the value delivered?
Of course, this is where it gets messy. Project-based contracts sound great, but they’re hard. Scoping is often harder than the work itself. I’ve had contracts where defining “done” took more effort than doing the thing. No wonder people default to hours. It’s simpler.
But maybe there’s a middle ground: delivery-based engagements. A retainer for a defined result. If I hit it in a day, great. If it takes the whole week, fine. Either way, you’re paying for the value, not the stopwatch.
the napkin problem
Here’s the question I ask myself sometimes:
If I can deliver something in a day that’s worth $50,000 to you — should you pay me $50,000 for one day?
Your gut might say no. That feels absurd. But if what I hand you creates $100,000 in upside, and I’m the one who can deliver it today instead of “maybe someday,” then why not? Isn’t that the whole point?
Picasso once sketched a doodle on a napkin in a café. A woman asked if she could have it. He said, “Sure — 10,000 francs.” Shocked, she replied: “But it only took you thirty seconds!” Picasso answered: “No, it took me forty years.”
That’s the point. The visible seconds or hours aren’t the real cost. The lifetime behind them is.
when mastery looks effortless
There’s even neuroscience on this. In one study, beginners, intermediates, and experts were asked to play the same piano piece.
- Beginners lit up their brains like fireworks — massive effort just to get the notes out.
- Intermediates showed less strain.
- Experts? Almost no activity. For them, the piece was effortless.
But it took years of practice to make it effortless. Years of unseen labor. Years that shouldn’t be erased just because the end result looks easy now.
Why should expertise be penalized? Why should the fact that I can deliver value faster — because of skill, because of experience — mean I get paid less?
reframe the game
I don’t have a neat system of rules for this. I’m not saying hourly work should vanish tomorrow. I just want to call out the mistake of equating time with value.
Time is nonrenewable. Value multiplies.
So when you’re thinking about your work, don’t just ask: How long will this take me?
Ask instead: What’s it worth?
