Pod Insights Change Wired Buy Back Your Time: where you lose most of your earning potential and life's fulfillment and joy. About this episode You can’t “manage time” if you refuse to learn to price it well. We’ve all done it: obsess over small savings, then burn an hour on chores, admin, or digital clutter that someone else or an AI assistant could handle faster and better. That trade feels harmless in the moment, but over weeks and months it quietly steals hours of deep work, creativity, relationships, and the energy that makes life feel worth living. Would any company pay a CEO rate and then assign assistant-level tasks? Yet tha...
Transcript 0:09 Speaker 00 Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shorina, I'm your host, I'm your partner in change and transformation, your master health executive, high-performance sleep and stress management coach, and just someone obsessed, as I hope you are too, with human potential, learning more about it, discovering it, unlocking and using more of it in our lives to create the most extraordinary life experience and create the most positive impact in the world we are capable of. I often, guys, when people ask me about my sort of life philosophy, what's all about,
0:51 Speaker 00 I always like to give people a comparison of human cells in a human body. We all are together on this journey. And for God knows what reason, whatever God you believe in or the universe, but I always feel that, just like cells in our body, we are serving some greater purpose. Now, just like cells in our body, we're probably not exactly sure what it is that we do here, all of us, and what exactly like the purpose that we are here to serve.
1:30 Speaker 00 But just like ourselves, there is innate drive or service that we are here to provide. And usually, when we get out of our head and just listen to what feels right in our lives, we find our, if not purpose, then our, our part in creating this greater picture vision, I don't know, state of universal health. And When we find that, you know, service, that value that we are here to provide, just like every cell in our body, that's when we really thrive.
2:15 Speaker 00 Don't you think that if you were a cell in your liver or in your heart, like there would be no greater purpose, no greater joy than to serve to the best of your ability, exactly that purpose, to serve the heart and the whole organism? That's my life philosophy and I find in my personal life and in my work with people, helping them to unlock and use more of their potential and find the fulfillment and purpose they're so looking for. That's what I find. Whenever we find that feeling that we're in the right place, there is no greater joy, no greater anything in life. You just feel in the right place, doing exactly what you're supposed to do,
2:59 Speaker 00 and there is nothing that feels better. So, besides that, what we are talking today about is unlocking more of your potential by learning how to maximize the value of your time, every minute of you being alive. And yes, we're going to talk about work, but life is not just about work. It is about delivering value and service, but it's also living your life to the best of your ability. Right? And I think the tragedy of our life, when we don't figure out how to maximize the joy, the energy, things that bring us fulfillment, whether that's, you know, leisure, relationship or work,
3:44 Speaker 00 when we don't figure that out and we sort of agree or get used to the idea, make peace with that, that it has to feel like suffering all the time, or we have to do all of the things that we don't actually like doing, tolerating people we don't like tolerating, doing the work that we hate doing, feeling that we are definitely not in the right place. When we sort of make peace with that and peace, I don't mean in a good way.
4:14 Speaker 00 But when we decide to just settle for that feeling of dissatisfaction all the time, that is the greatest tragedy and waste of our lives. And it is my mission to help as many people as possible to figure out a different way, a way that feel purposeful, fulfilling, and yes, joyful. And yes, even with all the problems and challenges that life will have, no matter like how much joy and alignment we create in our lives. So today we're talking about artificial intelligence. We're talking why it's so important to start learning about it and how to apply it in your life and how it can create time and space and resources
4:56 Speaker 00 for you not to just do more of the work that you love doing or potentially could love doing, unlocking more of your genius, using more of your talent, but also freeing up time to do the explorations in life that you wanna do, whether that's travel or some hobbies or relationships or spiritual journey, right? How to free up more time for you to fully realize yourself, to feel like you're tapping into every single part of your soul, of your mind, and you're living a fully realized life, whatever that means for you, right? AI, it is the first time in history that an average person, not everybody probably, not everybody is lucky.
5:41 Speaker 00 And a lot of, you know, there are still a lot of people who struggle with basic needs like food and shelter. But if you are listening to this podcast, you're probably not that person. And it is your job to maximize your talents, to maximize your potential, and also by doing so, help as much of the world, as many people as you can with what you have to offer. So this podcast is about AI, practicality of it, and how you can start applying it today. How I saved so many hours already to do more of the work that I love, to help more people in the way that only I can help and to, at the same time, live more of my life. So today you're gonna learn and hopefully get motivated to finally start using those AI tools.
6:26 Speaker 00 And I'm gonna share with you just a couple of tips that helped me immensely, that don't require a lot of learning or studying or a lot of investment, but has disproportionate return on this tiny, teeny investment of your time and a little bit of money.
6:44 Speaker 00 But we'll start with a story and with a question. Would you hire, just think about this question, guys. Would you hire a CEO of a company at an average pay of $400 an hour? You can Google it, that's like an average pay for a CEO. Would you hire that CEO only to then let them spend their day or a few hours a day handling a 25 an hour administrative tasks? Or many of those, you know, assignments that cost a lot less than $400,000, $400 an hour?
7:23 Speaker 00 Like, would you hire a CEO and ask them to do the job that their assistant or their secretary can do? Would you hire, if you're a business owner listening to this podcast, a marketing director at an average pay of $150 an hour? Only to insist they give out flyers on the streets with an average pay or average value of $15 an hour rate, right? Like, would you hire the most qualified person to do the task that a very unqualified person can do? Someone out of college or in high school, right? Would you do that?
8:04 Speaker 00 You'd probably call that a total waste if the company, like, I don't know, Apple or Microsoft, they hired their CEO or their top level executive and then decided, oh, you know what? Let us make this person do tasks that their assistant is fully capable of doing. What would you consider that? A total waste of taxpayers' money? You would consider that an outrage, a tragedy, maybe? A total joke? Yet, this is exactly how most of us treat the time of our lives.
8:45 Speaker 00 You do your own laundry, you manage your own cleaning and logistics, while earning multiple of what, if you were to hire the person for that, earns per hour? And you're not reinvesting that capacity into, I don't know, $100, $200 task that you are trained for, that you are capable of, right?
9:12 Speaker 00 You're in great at those tasks like laundry and cleaning. And it takes you longer than a professional cleaner. And you sacrifice the high leverage work that only you are capable of. That moves the needle forward in your life and career.
9:31 Speaker 00 For, for what? For saving, I don't know, seven dollars an hour. At least that's like the rate of hiring a cleaning person in South Africa. So you, you'd rather s- s- save quote unquote seven dollars. But then waste one hundred that your hour is worth on doing the same task. And not even being good at the task, right? Somehow this math just never gets our attention. Like some sale at our favorite grocery store. I would often hear people say, and I'm guilty of that too. Oh, you know, you can save like, I don't know, five dollars on buying this cheaper.
10:15 Speaker 00 Apples or fish or whatever that thing is, right? And then we waste hundreds in doing the work that we could safely. When cheaply pay again, even like ten dollars an hour, the person would get the job. They would get additional income, they would do a much better job. And we could actually do what we are qualified to do and. Or invest into education. So we then develop our career and our earning capacity. So we then make a hundred dollar more on that hour. That's your saving, not a five dollar on apples kind of s- saving.
10:57 Speaker 00 My, and guys, my clients who are business owners and executives at a top level. Positions. So my clients often come to me drowning, drowning. For like coming up for air barely with busy work. Emails, calendars, meetings, travel arrangement. So justifying it with some saving, reducing cost mindset. A professional assistant or a modern AI does this faster? With clear decisions rules. So you don't have to waste your decision making power and make wrong decisions about those things that you are emotionally engaged with.
11:40 Speaker 00 And again, they're gonna do it a lot better and faster. And you're gonna help someone to make more income as well. Helping sort of yourself, the world better and other people. Right? A CEO is paid four hundred dollars per hour. A secretary, twenty-five dollars per hour. And AI, like Claude, OpenAI, twenty bucks per month, which is about thirteen cents per hour. Thirteen cents per hour. And that is if I consider them to be on a forty-hour work week. If I don't, then it's like, what is it? I don't know, fraction of a dollar?
12:25 Speaker 00 Maybe even like less than two cents per hour? Right? And you are not using it for your email and your calendar? Like, whose money are you saving here, really? And what value are you not providing to the company? To the causes you care about? To the people in your life, personal and pro-personal to you guys? If you are spending your time on doing tasks that can be cheaply done by someone else, a person or an AI, you are not giving that same time to the people you say you love so much? To your, I don't know, employees, your team?
13:10 Speaker 00 To the causes, the positive impact you are able to create in this world? You are choosing, whether you're aware of that or not, to instead spend your time on tasks that are far beyond the impact and the value that you are able to create again for other people, your work, etc. So who are you serving with that? I'm not exactly sure. Right, my wake up call, guys, I'm gonna share with you my story. I recently asked Claude, once I finally installed Claude Co Work on my laptop, I asked Claude to organize my downloads folder,
13:52 Speaker 00 which is usually a huge mess with pictures, videos, resumes, clients, proposals, invoices, like all of it there, right? And I was dreading the task because like, gosh, it's gonna take me like at least an hour and then I would have to make all of the decision, where it all goes, like what's the logic behind organizing this folder? Probably end up just removing all of it or dumping it in one folder. So at least for the moment, it looks cleaner, right? And then Claude did it in five minutes, like all the folders named well with, you know, times and themes and important documents in a separate folder
14:34 Speaker 00 and things that are duplicates and I need to consider for deletion in a separate folder and some empty folders that were no longer needed because Claude allocated, you know, other folders for the staff and the organization was a lot better, a lot cleaner and made a lot more sense than my rushed mind a couple of months ago, you know, did create this folder structure. And then Claude suggested a calendar structure based on my priorities, which I happily agreed to. It asked me if I wanted, you know, a block of deep work here or there. It totally made sense from everything that Claude knows about my work and everything that Claude knows about my priorities and what I do.
15:17 Speaker 00 Then it asked for that specific week to perhaps reach out to certain people and cancel those meetings because they seem to not be aligned with any of my priorities. Some I agreed, some I declined and...
15:32 Speaker 00 The most important thing, it gave me back that hour, a lot of peace of mind that now I don't have to make all of these decisions. Now Claude made it for me without all the emotional baggage that I have about all these different decisions, right? I paid it, I don't know, cents per hour and again, it's probably like one cent or something. And then I could dedicate my time and decision-making and thinking capacity to my clients who pay me one hundred dollars per hour plus, right?
16:12 Speaker 00 And to my friends and to my family and to just dance around, to myself, to dedicate this time to my creativity and exploring what I'm capable of, right?
16:28 Speaker 00 That's what I call real savings, not your pennies for some cheaper grocery item kind of savings, but hundreds of dollars and invaluable quality of life. And it was just one day, one hour, but multiplied by many days and hours in a month.
16:49 Speaker 00 Over the course of a year, you might buy yourself a whole other vacation package paid and a whole lot of like memories made and a whole lot of creativity unlocked. It's the first time in history, guys, that an average knowledge worker can skyrocket their career journey for the price of a coffee. Like, less than the price of a coffee. Well, if you consider Claude and per month, it's gonna be like, what, twenty dollars? Like, how many coffees can you buy on that? Like, I don't know. But how much value can you create with all the freed up and capacity to think and make decisions and be creative and spend time with people you love on the things that you love doing, right? The tools are cheap, abundant and only getting better.
17:34 Speaker 00 Just the other day Claude released this new version of itself and they say that it started to learn by itself. And I was blown away by the quality. I'm like, that is so freaking amazing. That is some amazing help to the mission, the vision that I, I, I am here to create, right? So are you using those tools or still trying to save on freaking coffees? The opportunity cost, right? We call it savings in a economist, call it opportunity cost. What is it all about? Every hour you spend doing a ten dollar or less task is an hour you aren't spending on a two hundred,
18:19 Speaker 00 one hundred dollar hour task, whatever it is your hourly rate. You're not investing in your own development to make even more money. You're not, you're not investing in the quality of your life instead of doing some boring stuff that you couldn't care about, like organizing your folders, right? You aren't just losing money, you're losing your life.
18:41 Speaker 00 You're losing the growth, the strategy, the deep work that defines your impact. And maybe, again, most importantly, quality of your life? Because you don't have to work those freed up hours like they tell you, you know, you can be more productive. Well, you can be more productive, but you can also invest in your hobbies and go out with friends and go climb mountains and figure out what's the next skill to learn. Revolution of work is happening, guys. The future of work is already here. Just not evenly distributed and used by everyone who could take the advantage. Are you taking the advantage? This isn't about being lazy, guys.
19:25 Speaker 00 It's about being not smart about maximizing value per hour of your work and life. While doing the work that you outgrew many years ago, like cleaning. I don't know if you like cleaning, you can do cleaning. Like, I like cooking, so I still cook my dinners. So, but stop treating your time like a cheap commodity. It's the only thing that you'll never get make more of. Never. Like, it's, it's like you have an hourglass with the sand going one way and once it's gone. And plus, it is never guaranteed when it's going to be gone because somebody else, like a bus, I don't know, going to hit you and break that hourglass and you'll have nothing, right?
20:09 Speaker 00 So the time is running out, you're never gonna make more of it. And are you spending it on the things that enlarge and expand your life? Or on doing tasks that, you know, you have, you don't care about? So. Practical question, eh, like an interesting question. What's your rate per hour? They say that in average year, if you have like forty hour a week, it's a little bit more than two thousand working hours. Whatever it is you make per year, if you don't know what you're making per month or per hour, just divided by the amount of hours that you work.
20:52 Speaker 00 That is again, may might be two thousand if you are close to forty, to forty hours a week. So that is your hourly rate. And then look at all the tasks that you allow yourself to do, which don't produce that much value in your life, to be honest. Like cleaning, yes, there is value, but in terms of like your life growth expansion, probably not that much. And it's probably cheap, you know, they say. So I learned that from Dan Martel, who wrote the book Back, Buy Back Your Time. He coached some of the top CEOs, business owners on strategies to maximize the value, not just productivity, but value of one's lifetime.
21:34 Speaker 00 And so he says you need to divide your two thousand by eight to figure out the amount of money you can spend on any help that you need to bring in to delegate all of the stuff that you don't like doing. So let's say if your hourly rate is one hundred, divide this by four. And so that is twenty five dollars per hour. And that is all the tasks that cost that or less than that, that you should delegate, outsource, remove from your plate. Obviously, again, if that's something you really love doing and you wanna like,
22:15 Speaker 00 I'd pay you and you'd love doing that, or nobody pays you and you do it for free. If that's the task like that, then, you know, you can consider it and leave it in your schedule. But anything, anything less than that, something that you hate, twenty five, again, your rate per hour divided by four, and that is the amount you can. Can safely spend on delegating outsources and removing stuff from your plate that you don't like doing, right? So that is the math. Figure out your rate per hour divided by four and then ask yourself, what are the tasks? This is my budget. What are the tasks I can delegate, outsource, remove? So then I can reinvest that time. Again, the concept is buying back your time.
23:01 Speaker 00 So then I can reinvest that time into developing myself, into developing my career, into delivering more value, into delivering more impact, into my quality of life, relationships, other people, developing and mentoring others, and spending time with your loved ones, in your health and your well-being, in your spiritual life, and exploring all the hobbies you never have time for, right? So what's your rate per hour? What can you outsource, delegate again? If it's low energy, doesn't give you energy. If it's low value, doesn't bring like, you know, a ton of value into your life and you'd love to take it off your plate? So divide your hourly rate by four. That is the amount of money you can now afford, affordably dedicate to hiring,
23:45 Speaker 00 to hiring people who will take stuff off your plate. So that is that. And then you start asking yourself these questions. Okay, where can I reinvest that to increase my learning ability? So then you can outsource and delegate even more complex stuff? Or to reinvest that time into my life, into people that I love? And into, I don't know, my spirituality, exploring, enjoying life? Right? So like, what's your rate per hour? And are you finally ready to stop doing the work that costs pennies? So you can do more of the work that pays what's your potential worth to the world?
24:26 Speaker 00 And guys, again, it's a lot more savings than any grocery or clothing or whatever sale you got last year. I can guarantee you like that hour, that cloud, did all of my organizing. That is at least ninety-nine dollars of saving.
24:48 Speaker 00 Per hour, because again, I usually charge my clients $100 plus per the hour of my time. And Claude just saved me one of those hours that I can give to my clients for that pay.
25:03 Speaker 00 And that's the question of the day, guys. So what are you spending the time of your life that you're never gonna get more of?
25:13 Speaker 00 Before I give you my final word, don't forget to share this podcast episode with one other person. You know, if you know that person, they're like drowning in those low-grade tasks that they hate and they never have time for anything else. Share this podcast episode with them, maybe buy them the book, Buy Back Your Time as well. My hope is and desire to have Aden Martel, the author of the book, on this podcast very soon to talk about the concept of buying back your time. Again, share this podcast with that person who is drowning in the tasks that just not worth their talent. And don't forget to rate, review this podcast on all the platforms where you can.
25:54 Speaker 00 So we could reach more people, so then people reinvest their time and talent into worthy causes and we create more beautiful lives and more positive impact in the world. So please help. And as a parting exercise, again, don't forget what you're gonna do when you finish listening to this podcast. Stop your car, stop everything that you do and calculate A, your rate per hour. Again, if you don't know, you know what you make per year or per month, divide that per amount of hours that you work in a month or a year, about 2,000 hours in a year, a little bit more than that. Then divide that by your hourly rate by four.
26:32 Speaker 00 And that is the amount of money you can dedicate to hiring someone to take stuff off your plate. So then you can reinvest that into your career and personal development, your impact you wanna create in the world. People around you just freaking dance around. And that's it for today, guys. Thank you for listening. Thank you for dedicating your time to growth, personal development and betterment of the world and yourself. And till next time, keep growing and start buying back your time, which you'll never get more.
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