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Your freedom number, in hours.

A short worksheet from Josh St. Laurent. Measure your number in hours, then decide what those hours are for.

Real estate investors and business owners are good at one number. How many doors. How much cash flow. What the business is worth. Many people are never asked the other question: what is the number for?

Here's mine. At 28 I hit a net worth of $1 million and felt more trapped than I ever had. I was working 50-plus hours a week at something I didn't believe in, just to make that number on a statement grow. The number was never the point. Time was.

So let's measure your number in hours.

Five steps, about 25 minutes

Bring a pen. The worksheet has room to write, and a worked example for the math in steps 2 and 3. Examples are hypothetical.

  1. Step 1 (5 minutes)

    Your hours today

    Write down a normal week.

  2. Step 2 (5 minutes)

    Your freedom number, the usual way

    Spending, income and the gap.

  3. Step 3 (5 minutes)

    Turn it into hours

    What the gap costs you in hours.

  4. Step 4 (10 minutes)

    What are those hours for?

    Four sentences, in plain words.

  5. Step 5

    Your own number in hours

    One sentence you can say out loud.

If the gap disappeared tomorrow, which hours would I take back first?

Get the worksheet.

Your freedom number, in hours. A PDF you can fill in by hand.

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What this worksheet is not

It isn't investment, tax or legal advice. The examples are made up to show the math. Your results depend on your own facts, and this page can't tell you what to buy, sell or do. If you'd like to talk through it, you can set up a short intro call.

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