More Fun With Math and Online Coaching

To explore the concept of online coaching and time-dollars a bit further, let’s use my previous example (5 hours per week spent planning, time is worth $20/hour):

By hiring an online coach, this is an extra 260 hours per year of time not spent researching and writing your own training/nutrition. Let us suppose that a coach charges $500 for 13 weeks of programming. At the aforementioned $20/hour, it’s going to take you 25 hours of additional work (or $ saving/sacrifice) to afford this plan. In return, you will accrue a net gain of 40 additional hours of your life. 13 weeks is one quarter of a year, and we already established that you are gaining 260 hours per full year. 260*25%=65 hours, 65 minus the 25 extra "hours" you need to work = 40. At $20 per hour, that's an additional $800 time-dollars you've netted.  

To extrapolate: at $2,000 for an entire year of programming you would work an additional 100 hours @ $20/hour (or one extra hour per day for 20 weeks, a half hour per day for 40 weeks, etc). For the commitment of 100 extra hours per year, you receive a full year of programming and a net gain of 160 HOURS OF YOUR LIFE that you aren’t reading, plotting and planning. 160 * $20 = $3,200, or a 61% return. 

At some point, this is no longer a cost effective endeavor. I would argue this, because there are excellent online coaches who are very flexible and work with you on payment plans or reduced rates. But we do need to draw a line somewhere. One way to sort this out, using totally new values:

Let’s say you spend one hour per week (52 hours per year) with programming and your time is worth $20/hr. Your hypothetical annual “budget” is $1,040 or 52 hours. Any total programming that doesn’t break this price point or the number of hours expended is accretive to your life through time-dollar savings. A $1,200 annual plan is a net loss of (15%) in time-dollar terms since you will need to work 15% more hours (60-52/52) and thus “spend” more money (1,200-1040/1040) than you would be saving.

There are some caveats to consider with this math. The less time you already devote to planning nutrition and training, the less you will derive from this activity since you are investing very few time-dollars in the first place. Also: this is purely an exercise regarding planning. I've given no considerations to the actual training/exercise time, nor have I discussed results. I'll save those for later, but I think that is also a compelling argument. I believe the math behind training time may illustrate why Crossfit has such an intriguing value proposition, despite the high "cost" for box membership.

I did all this in a fairly short amount of time, so feel free to check my math and ask me if something seems off; I ALWAYS forget to carry the "1". The point I'm trying to make is this: your time is EXPENSIVE. By putting your time into dollar terms, i'm trying to illustrate the fact that you're spending money every second of every day. A little basic math can help you make choices that offer higher potential returns with lower risk to the downside.  

On Personal Outsourcing

So it’s a New Year, 2012, full of promise and potential. Rather than resolutions, the beginning of the year bring some purging and donating of clothing and other unnecessary things I’ve accrued throughout the previous year. I’m a minimalist guy in the first place, so it isn’t a huge load of stuff. It gives me a sense of renewal and rejuvenation, as well as some extra distance from that Sword of Damocles that always feels just a little too close. 

Along those lines, I’ve taken this a step further by outsourcing my training programming as well as my nutrition. For those who are curious, I’m turning training over to Chad Smith and my nutrition to Michael Keck. This allows me to take two items off my plate and redirect that time and energy towards actual performance, as well as other aspects of my life. With very few exceptions, you get what you pay for. And by “pay”, I don’t necessarily mean monetary. 

Indulge me in a quick,"back of the envelope" math lesson: Let’s say your time is worth $20/hour; this is 33.3333 cents per minute. You spend 5 hours per week reading, researching and writing out your training program and another 10 hours per week training and commuting to/from the gym (no need to factor in vehicle depreciation or gas). In one week, you’ve spent $100 planning to train and another $200 actually training. To extrapolate this further: $100 per week=$400 per month=$5,200 per year in planning alone. Hiring someone sure seems cheap as hell now, doesn’t it?  Spending fewer actual dollars and doing something yourself can get expensive.

One of the greatest aspects of online coaching is your ability to vet the person you are hiring. How many horror stories have you heard about people who hired "personal trainers" from their local gym. The Internet really allows you to do a great bit of research on coaching and find people who are truly top class in their profession. I'll write more on this specific topic in the future but let me say this: this is NOT purely related to athletic training and nutrition.

To expand the idea of outsourcing to other parts of your life, have a look at this blog on Living in the Cloud. These are all fantastic examples of outsourcing aspects of your life and collaborative consumption. Changes in social mood and technological advances are creating what Edward Norton in Fight Club called "Single serving friends", but on a global level and across different services and mediums. Ironically, while embracing the impermanence of possessing "things", this turn in social mood has caused us to emphasize personal networks and communities. Never before in history have the people that we truly want to interact with and build meaningful relationships with been so readily available.

I had to nerd out on that for a minute as it has really been at the front of my cerebral cortex for awhile. I'll write more about collaborative consumption in the future; I only hope I'm not late to that party.

Questions that I've been asking myself as we roll into 2012: What else can I take off my plate and outsource? What can outsourcing and collaborative consumption do for me and my life? And more importantly: what can I do for outsourcing and collaborative consumption?