The Income-Based Self-Valuation Formula
All of us are constantly striving to improve ourselves day by day. But how do we actually know that the person we are today has become a better version of the person we were yesterday?
To assess personal progress, we need a concrete measuring stick. In this article, I would like to share a method I use to "put a value" on myself — a way to see my efforts more clearly across different stages of life, and to understand how my value has changed over time.
1. How to assess your self-worth?
For the vast majority of people, we constantly strive to develop our skills and contribute value to society through the work we do every day. When we work for an organization, we are essentially participating in solving a social problem, and society rewards us with a corresponding compensation. More often than not, that compensation is our salary — the measure of value that society assigns to what we bring to the table.
Of course, money is not the only factor that defines a person's worth, but it can serve as an objective indicator for evaluating the value of each individual's contribution. The formula for measuring self-worth based on this factor is as follows:
Self-worth = Money earned / Actual time spent on work
For example:
Suppose your monthly salary is $769 (20,000,000 ₫).
In reality, you do not spend your entire day on work — you also need time for meals, rest, and personal activities.
Therefore, if you spend 8 hours/day, 5 days/week, 4 weeks/month working, your actual working hours per month amount to 160 hours.
From there, your hourly self-worth would be:
$769 / 160 hours = $4.81/hour
This means society is paying you $4.81 for every hour of your labor.
Keep in mind that you cannot evaluate yourself solely based on the amount you earn — you must also consider the time you invest in that work.
That is to say, with the same monthly salary of $115 (3,000,000 ₫):
If you spend 160 hours/month on that job, your hourly value is only about $0.72 — a fairly low figure.
However, if you work efficiently and only need 6 hours/month to complete the same work, then your hourly value becomes $19.23 — a quite impressive figure.
This shows that you are working efficiently, because you only spend 6 hours to earn that income, while having plenty of time left for other pursuits to increase your earnings further.
Therefore, it is not the money but the efficiency of your work that is the key factor in assessing your value.
2. How to increase your self-worth?
Based on the formula above, there are two ways to increase your self-worth:
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Increase your income
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Reduce the time spent on work while maintaining the same output quality
Both of these goals can only be achieved by continuously upgrading your capabilities and skills. As your skills improve, you work more efficiently, shorten the time it takes to complete tasks, and consequently receive higher compensation from organizations.
So, beyond simply working hard every day, always keep learning and honing your skills so that your self-worth continues to grow!
Bottom lines
In this article, I introduced a "measuring stick" that people can use to assess their personal progress, based on the valuation that society places on them.
However, please keep in mind that the valuation formula in this article only measures us through an economic lens. Beyond this, out in the world, there are many people who work incredibly efficiently yet do so purely out of passion and goodwill, without any regard for monetary reward — in these cases, applying the formula alone would fail to capture the full value that person brings to society.
Therefore, treat this as a method for objectively evaluating work efficiency based on income. To truly assess someone's overall worth, many more factors need to be taken into consideration.
* Images in this article are sourced from Unsplash
Thank you for reading my article!
Kim,