Get Paid For Your Judgement

 I would love to be paid purely for my judgement, not for any work. I want a robot, capital, or computer to do the work, but I want to be paid for my judgement. I think every human should aspire to being knowledgeable about certain things and being paid for our unique knowledge. Then, we can be masters of our own time because we are just being tracked as outputs and not inputs. 

Demonstrated judgement - credibility around the judgement - is so critical. Warren Buffett wins here because he has massive credibility. He's been highly accountable. He's been right over and over in the public domain. He's built a reputation for high integrity, so you can trust him. People will throw infinite leverage behind him because of his judgement. Nobody asks him how hard he works. Nobody asks him when he wakes up or when he goes to sleep. They're like, "Warren, just do your thing." 

Judgement - especially - demonstrated judgement, with high accountability and a clear track record - is critical. We waste our time with short - term thinking and busywork. Warren Buffet spends a year deciding and a day acting. That act lasts a decades. 

Just from being marginally better, like running a quarter mile a fraction of a second faster, some people get paid a lot more - orders of magnitude more. Leverage magnifies those differences even more. Being at the extreme in your art is very important in the age of leverage. 

Value your time at an hourly rate, and ruthlessly spend to save time at that rate. You will never be worth more than you think you're worth. No one is going to value you more than you value yourself. You just have to set a very high personal hourly rate and you have to stick to it. Even when I was young, I just decided I was worth a lot more than the market though I was worth, and I started treating myself that way.

Always factor your time in every decision. How much time does it take? It's going to take you an hour to get across town to get something.  If you value yourself at one hundred dollars an hour, that's basically throwing one hundred dollars our of your pocket. Are you going to do that? 

Another way of thinking about something is, if you can outsource something or not do something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it or don't do it. If you can hire someone to do it for less than your hourly rate, hire them. That even includes things like cooking.