When considering jobs and careers, many people focus on the salary. To me, this is wrong. What is most important is that you maximize dollars per stress hour.
Being a trader on the New York Stock Exchange can make you hundreds of thousands of dollars per year but the stress is incredible and these people are not only basket cases at the end of the day but they die prematurely from all kinds of stress related diseases.
In my view, STRESS is the number one killer in the world and most kinds of deaths can be attributed to stress. The adrenalin pumping “fight of flight” response to stress worked well when we were in loin cloths being chased by tigers but in todays world, it gets triggered far too easily and far too often and we suffer the health consequences. Stress raises blood pressure. Stress causes loss of libedo. Stress causes sleep problems. Stress causes anxiety. All things that drastically reduce quality of life.
$/StressHour is how you should measure salary, not $/hour
Most people just look at salary and I am here to tell you that this is shortsighted. I have seen this first hand in Myranmar, one of the poorest countries in the world. I saw entire villages of fisherman who make less than $5 a day BUT because they have no stress, their salary in terms of dollars per stress hour is infinite. They are PAID to go fishing and live on the beautiful Bay of Bengal in bamboo houses on the waters edge.
Lawyers, doctors, engineers and other professionals make huge salaries BUT often their stress levels are often very high so their overall quality of life is very low. I saw this early on in my engineering career which is why I quit my W2 engineering job and “retired” to do the things I love. My salary was a fraction of what I made in engineering but I love doing it and its no stress so my dollars per stress hour is way higher.
How much money do you need?
Most of us have to decide. What is more important, having a high salary or low stress. Please think more about things in terms of dollars per stress hour – the real measurement of wealth.