Background
Mert Sahin holds a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Hamburg in Germany, and has more than twenty years of leadership experience, from venture-backed startups to multibillion-dollar global conglomerates across a range of industries.
He has lived and worked across Asia, Europe, Africa and North America, leading turnarounds, scale-ups and international expansions. The lessons from designing those organizations, and from running his own days, shaped the operating system presented in his book.
Money got an operating system. Time got a slogan. The Time Exchange Rate is the attempt to give time the same treatment: a rate, a ledger, and the rules to use them.
What the Time Exchange Rate measures
The measure at the centre of the book is deliberately narrow, which is what makes it usable.
TIME EXCHANGE RATE = net value kept ÷ the hours the activity truly consumes
For an employee that is take-home pay after tax, commute cost and work expenses, divided by contracted hours plus commute plus unpaid overtime plus recovery time. The claim of the book is that time is an economically real asset that is routinely spent without a price attached, and that attaching a rate changes the decision.
Read the full definition of the Time Exchange Rate, or work out your own in about two minutes.
The book
Time: The Ultimate Currency. The Operating System for Your Most Finite and Neglected Resource is built in five parts, each resting on the number at the base. Fifteen chapters carry the system from a personal rate through business decisions to the life the ledger is ultimately for, with a blank exercise template after each chapter.
Speaking
Mert delivers the method in four formats: a keynote, a half-day workshop, an executive or board session, and a team offsite. Each one ends with every person in the room holding a number they did not have when they walked in.
Tools built alongside the book
- The personal Time Exchange Rate calculator, which returns your own hourly rate.
- The Dental Practice TER Calculator, the same method applied to a practice owner, with cost data for the fifty US states and the District of Columbia.
- The reader exercises, fifteen interactive worksheets that save to your own browser rather than to a server.
The calculators compute in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you choose to submit a form. See the privacy policy.
Get in touch
For speaking, workshops and board sessions, the enquiry form is the fastest route. To hear when the book is published, join the list.