How Much Is Your Unhappiness Worth?

Many of us wear busyness like a badge of honor. For others, an ashamed sense of overwhelm might be the challenge. Some just feel stuck, uninspired, or straight up burned out.

But what sets those who call themselves “happy” apart?

I started asking myself this question over ten years ago. I was making great money, working easy hours, doing what I (thought I) wanted, traveling the world while I worked…

…and I was miserable.

Every time I thought of mentioning my so-called plight to a friend, I could sense the eye roll coming before opening my mouth.

Walking home from yoga before work one crisp fall morning, I stopped for a coffee. While in line, I made the mistake of opening an email on my phone. It was from a colleague I was having a hard time with.

All the stress felt instantly overwhelming. Halfway through reading the email, I was at the front of the line.  Emily was working that day.

“Morning, Andy! The usual…double short Americano?” she asked with a glowing smile.

“Hey Emily, yep…” my voice trailed off as I forced the corners of my mouth to rise.

She was so genuinely happy.

But why? How? It clearly was not the money. And I was coming from yoga. Shouldn't I be the one on cloud nine!?

I was truly envious.

I remembered in college when I worked on the tech floor of an investment bank in Jersey City. I'd take the company bus from Ground Zero through the tunnel with the brokers. One guy, let’s call him Dan, always stood out. He’d take up all 3 seats of the back row. Anxious, aggressive, and flat out loud.

What's the difference between Emily and Dan? Why’s she so much happier? He clearly prints money. And she does not. But she clearly loves her job, her life. And he does not.

But aren't you supposed to love your work and be able to make good money? What's this magic secret everyone's talking about? Why couldn’t I figure it out? I felt in my gut like I wanted to quit my job, but that didn’t make sense in my head. It seemed so perfect on paper — making great money and having all the perks.

Sipping my coffee on the walk home, I figured Emily is probably happy with work most all day. Okay, let's give her an hour a day that she’s unhappy with her job. Assuming she works six hours a day, five days a week, and 50 weeks a year, that gives her 250 hours a year of unhappiness because of work. And if she makes $25 an hour with tips, she’s earning $37.5K a year across all the hours she works.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t be crazy for our investment banker Dan to make 10x that, $375K a year. Let’s say he works 60 hours a week, but he’s unhappy 40 of them. On top of that, he’s irritated during the 20 hour a week commute and stressed with his family another 10 hours a week related to work. Adding up all his unhappy time from work, there are SEVENTY hours week that are unpleasant! That gives Dan 3,500 unhappy hours from work a year — if he’s sleeping anywhere over five hours a night, that makes over half of his waking life not enjoyable…and it’s because of work!

It hit me when I opened my apartment door — when Emily is happy or doing something she cares about, she doesn't think about the money. Enjoying or finding meaning from what she does, she might as well be working for free. It's like when we volunteer. Hell, maybe her goal is to show people like me the way. But Dan, he likely wouldn’t be there without the money and ego, espeiclaly during all those unhappy times. And I doubt there’s a deep sense of meaning he’s getting from day trading. The same probably goes for most bank robbers...

Putting these ideas together, it seems logical to attribute all the income one expects to earn in a given year to the unhappy hours required to produce it (since money is likely the main motivation to persist in the moment, justifying the happy, meaningful hours in the same ways we do when we volunteer). Dividing annual earnings by unhappy hours, you get your Unhappy Wage™ — the price for which you sell your unhappiness.

Emily comes in at $37.5K a year divided by 250 unhappy hours a year making her Unhappy Wage $150 an hour! Not bad. Dan, on the other hand, makes $375K a year (great, right!?) but loathes 3,500 of those hours, bringing him under $110 an hour for his Unhappy Wage. Not only is that literally a ton of unhappy hours, but Dan is selling his unhappiness for less than Emily! Who would you rather be?

What’s your unhappy wage today? What would you like it to be?

To help answer these questions, you can think about how much someone would have to pay you to do the job you most disliked for an hour. For me, that’s the guy walking in circles shoveling horse shit into a garbage can he pushes around Central Park in the blistering summer heat.

I decided that morning my unhappy wage was $250 an hour. I did some napkin math, and I gave notice the next day.

That isn’t necessarily the right next step for you — there are two big levers you have before leaving if your Unhappy Wage doesn’t make sense: (1) figure out how to reduce the hours you're unhappy — including reducing total hours worked if you're salaried, and/or increasing proven happiness-boosting activities into your routine like meditation, gratitude practice, morning journaling, exercise, sleep, time in nature, time with community, and healthy diet; or (2) make your case for a massive raise.

(I’d done all I could at the time on these fronts by this point and decided to instead draw from the Serenity Prayer.)

I believe the Unhappy Wage is an ideal metric to focus on maximizing throughout our careers.

Now you know this, forget pay as the sole metric, beware of sensationalizing long working hours, and optimize your Unhappy Wage.

But don’t beat yourself up if you’ve been busy up until now. Our brains are wired for short-term returns — the gap between grinding at work and putting hot dinner on the table leaves the mind craving a reward. When we don’t track to healthy metrics in our day-to-day jobs, we default to the lowest common denominator: busyness (trust me, I’ve been there…lots).

Just in case you might still think time spent working is a productive metric to track, consider…does Warren Buffet work 100,000 times more than the average American?

Save yourself the burnout and shame.

As a matter of fact, wearing busyness like a badge of honor actually leads to burnout!

A quick note on burnout — that actually comes when we feel like we’re wasting our time. Working lots on something we’re passionate about is quite different…

If you’re feeling busy and none of this resonates (and you’re still reading), you might consider asking yourself, “what am I avoiding by keeping myself busy?”

These days, I track my time for the opposite reason from many, to keep the number of hours I work in check. One new habit I’m working on developing (to improve happiness and productivity) is taking a 15-minute break every hour, also backed by science. I wish I’d known all this in my bones in my 20s!

If it makes sense to change companies, ask your peers at new potential jobs how many hours in an average day, week they're happy. Then, ask the inverse. Then, you can worry about pay. See if you can estimate their and your potential Unhappy Wage and how it compares to your goal.

And consider, what makes you happy and unhappy at work?

For me, it's a lot about the people I interact with and the meaningfulness of my work, I realized that morning. It was time to find a way to make money from the things I loved and stop trying to find a way to love the things that were making me money.

Whatever you do, do it mindfully.

Thanks for reading,

Andy