Neutral hours: a tool for valuing time and energy

Abstract

We get lots of opportunities to convert between time and money, and it’s hard to know which ones to take, since they use up other mental resources. I introduce the neutral hour as a tool for thinking about how to make these comparisons. A neutral hour is an hour spent where your mental energy is the same level at the start and the end. I work through some examples of how to use this tool, look at implications for some common scenarios, and explore the theory behind them.