1) People seek purpose in their jobs. The jobs that provide this usually require an investment of time.
2) People seek status. Status comes from relative wealth and intelligence, which requires an investment of time.
3) People usually don't have the choice to trade money for time. You usually can't say, "I'm going to work 5 hours less per week and in return take a smaller salary". Hourly workers can (sort of) do this, but they're the ones who usually can't afford to do this.
All that said, there still are plenty of opportunities to exchange money for more time and people (IMO irrationally) pass these opportunities up. Ex. paying for food instead of taking the time to cook, clean, shop. Ex. paying someone to clean your house. I'm not really sure what the explanation for this is.
In paying for these things, you're also giving up control, possibly leisure (some people enjoy cooking), and possibly quality. It can still certainly be a win, but you're not simply comparing prices of a fungible good.
People fail to correctly value (1) the cost of these time saving services and (2) their own time.
It's similar to how people will drive around to save 5 cents per gallon on gasoline. Usually, they will only end up saving a dollar. Or someone will make multiple trips to their car to unload all groceries (which can add significant time in apartment buildings) because they wanted to save 20 cents and not buy a paper/plastic bag during checkout. These little things add up in time.
I think it's clear that people don't value these things properly. The interesting question is why. What are the underlying heuristics and biases? I'm posing the question, but I don't have a great answer to it.
Because most people don't think that deeply about these things. And while money can be easily quantified, its not the case with time. I think pg has an essay on this.
2) People seek status. Status comes from relative wealth and intelligence, which requires an investment of time.
3) People usually don't have the choice to trade money for time. You usually can't say, "I'm going to work 5 hours less per week and in return take a smaller salary". Hourly workers can (sort of) do this, but they're the ones who usually can't afford to do this.
All that said, there still are plenty of opportunities to exchange money for more time and people (IMO irrationally) pass these opportunities up. Ex. paying for food instead of taking the time to cook, clean, shop. Ex. paying someone to clean your house. I'm not really sure what the explanation for this is.