Two jobs can pay the same but feel very different. The chakra-nervous-system aligners dub this phenomenon “feeling X in your body,” or evidence that our nervous system is “fried” because of this dissonance between passion and forced labor. It is a misalignment of sorts, that’s for sure…
While I tend to scoff at this sort of verbiage, along with phrases like “emotional labor”, there is some room for it in understanding our relationship to money. If we want to relate this to our nervous system, here’s the best I’ve got: some ways of making money are stabilizing. They’re our monetary safety net which signals to “our body’s” calculation that everything is running smoothly. Other ways of making money pull us into low-grade fight-or-flight at the mere ping of an email.
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Not all hours are created equal. I scrape dog shit, deep-clean kennels, run working-breed dogs, and help shelter staff for free every single week (sometimes up to 8 hours a week), and I feel like I’m being paid in soul. I crave physical labor. I like straightforward, honest, non-negotiable work. The outcome is tangible and is not up for interpretation. On top of that, any time spent with any species of animal boosts my spirits like few other things could.
On the flipside, working 8 hours with autistic children or adults getting my hair pulled, getting spit at, and explaining for the thousandth time why aggression shouldn’t result in McDonald’s? This sort of work functions like a leech on my intelligence, not to mention the thanklessness of it all. On top of today’s children having zero consequences and today’s providers falling prey to the latest, progressive trend, it’s unsurprising 97% of us clinicians hate our jobs.
The Great Reframe of Shitty Work
Pain per hour = how much a task drains you relative to what it pays.
This is why it’s crucial readers understand what I’m saying: I’m not one of those Yas Queen coaches who will encourage you to quit. For now, it’s more important that you notice which tasks dampen your drive and which tasks ignite it.
This Week’s Experiment: Your Personal Pain-Per-Hour Audit
For this lab, you will be tracking your top 5 recurring tasks. For the sake of this publication, which is focused on creating autonomy and options with our money and our time, we’ll stick to 5 recurring work tasks. We’ll get to all the “Invisible Load” of at-home nonsense which subtly buries us in another piece.
I suggest using the “worksheet” below to monitor your current state of professional resentment. List 3–5 tasks you do regularly at work, and fill in each question below using the below scale to rate your Pain Score:
TASK 1:Pay per hour:Pain score (1–5):Energy after (↑ ↓ =):Would I do this if money didn’t matter? Y/NTASK 2:Pay per hour:Pain score (1–5):Energy after (↑ ↓ =):Would I do this if money didn’t matter? Y/NTASK 3:Pay per hour:Pain score (1–5):Energy after (↑ ↓ =):Would I do this if money didn’t matter? Y/N
Scoring Guide
* High Pay + High Pain = Leverage Opportunity
You’re being compensated well, which means this is a strategic exit candidate. If you can replace or reduce these hours, you free up serious energy without tanking your income overnight.
* Low Pay + Low Pain = Hobby Energy
This work doesn’t cost you much and might even give you a lift. It’s not urgent to replace — it can stay, evolve, or even grow if it aligns with how you want to spend your time.
* Low Pay + High Pain = Red Alert, Abort Mission
This is the most expensive quadrant emotionally. You’re paying with energy and not getting much back financially — these are the first hours worth questioning, redesigning, or phasing out.
With even this surface-level recognition of the emotional drainage, we can highlight tradeoffs, opportunities for negotiation or “pivot”, and decide what to replace first. Replacing our salary isn’t one giant leap or one fiery ask to your boss. It’s replacing our highest pain hours first, increasing our leverage, and creating some breathing room to make our next move.
Here is a table of my own results and how my other paid tasks/unpaid tasks “convert” to clinic work. Mind you, this is my own, personal metric. I can’t stand clinical work, so even 8 hours of scrubbing doggie doo-doo is more pleasant and fulfilling than 1 hour of home-based BCBA crap.
To replace $100/an hour of clinical work, at a Pain Score of a full 5:
Stacking Strategy: How I Replace One $100 Clinical Hour
When you look at income this way, replacing a clinical hour stops feeling like an all-or-nothing leap. It becomes a mix-and-match equation. Instead of asking, “What pays the same?” the better question becomes, “What combination of lower-pain work gets me there?” That shift alone turns the idea of replacing a salary from overwhelming into mechanical.
What I Want From You
1. Reply with your highest pain task.
2. What would you replace it with first?
Please feel free to reach out to me to troubleshoot this. I love talking to you all about how we can get the hell out of thankless helper jobs and into work that is, at worst, more tolerable.
