Dear Payce,
Every time I am in the lab I want to cause chaos and I don’t give a damn. How do I stop myself from mouth pipetting and climbing in the hoods? How do I resist eating the media just to mess with the other people who are in the lab with me?
Sincerely,
Scientist.
Dear Scientist,
First of all, welcome to season two of the column. Thank you so much for submitting a question. I am a huge supporter of the sciences so this question hits close to home. First, of course, an update; we have put the donations from the last season into purchasing mouse pads for the betterment of our readers. We decided on the Corsair MM800 RGB Polaris mouse pad, 13.7 x 10.2 x 0.2 inches that lights up our desk up like a Christmas tree. Our mouse traction has improved 10 fold boosting our QTAR (question to answer ratio) by 20%.
People don’t realize how important mouse traction is when attempting to complete what modern society demands of us. I mean think about it, If we say the average mouse user swipes 1000 times a day (a low ball estimate) and then we then reduce each mouse swipe by 3000 (yes it’s that much!) microseconds this could save the average computer user a whole 3 seconds each day!
Ok, ok I get it. 3 seconds, so what? Being a primarily economics focused column, it seems weird we’re talking so much about seconds, I mean, what can you do with seconds anyway? Well actually, studies show that people who use time can actually make more money using it. A study performed at Wheaton College found that people working the same job for 10 hours a day made a colossal 90% more than people working for 1 hour. This means if we’re saving time we’re actually saving money! The average American earns $27.16 for an hour of their time. Can you imagine how much more they could earn if they had 3 more seconds in their day? Get a load of this.
There are approximately 3600 seconds in an hour and an average of 24 hours in a day. A 3 second increase in time results in a .0035% increase in the over all time freed up in a day. Using the average pay in the US this translates to a whopping $0.09! Ok, ok, ok. So that means that your saving an average of $0.09 per day but this adds up. If there are 365 days in a year, and you’re making $0.09 more a day, then in one year you will have made an extra $32.85 a year!!!
If you invest your bawler new cash every year, with a modest 10% compound interest rate this would happen.
Congratulations, you are rich, and also old.
Much love,
Payce Shepard and advice team
Advice team: Micah Madox-Gilbert
Write to us at shepard_payce@wheatoncollege.edu