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Hey rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Maya runs three content businesses for people building a side hustle while employed.
She started all three in her own 9-to-5, working them at night.
Her pitch is simple: a real business can start on the side. No resignation letter required.
And her readers? They live it too — big dreams, four spare hours a week.
⛳️ Problem:
Maya runs three content businesses, and not one of them is moving.
Every night she splits herself across a newsletter, a templates shop, a podcast.
The newsletter sits on issue three.
The shop has one file.
The podcast has zero recordings shipped.
Four months in, she's wiped out — and three projects sit half-built. Ouch.
Her frustration: how to focus on the one business worth her time.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The absurd hourly rate
Picture a tiny café with one busy cook.
Say yes to every order — cakes, coffees, a free favor.
The line never moves.
Nothing actually gets finished. Sound familiar?
That's the trap Naval Ravikant figured out.
He's the angel investor behind early Twitter and Uber.
His free book The Almanack is one of the most-read guides on solo wealth.
His take: most side hustlers price their own time way too low.
The fix? Pick an absurd hourly rate.
Then say no to everything below it.
And get this — Naval lived it himself.
He valued his time at $5,000 an hour, long before anyone paid him that.
So he refused the cheap time-sinks: haggling a bill, returning a faulty gadget.
At that rate, an hour spent saving $50 wasn't worth it.
He saved those hours for his one big bet.
🚗 The steps
💰 Step 1 — Pick your absurd hourly rate.
Think of the price tag on a thing you'd never haggle over.
It's high on purpose — it tells you what's worth your time and what isn't.
Pick the rate your future self would charge today. $500, $1,000, $5,000 — go absurd.
Maya picks $500 an hour.
That's $4,000 for one full 8-hour day.
The number gives her a single test for every yes.
🎯 Step 2 — Audit last week's hours.
Think of a grocery receipt at the end of the week.
You don't really know where the money went until you see it written down.
Your hours work the same way.
Open your calendar.
Tag every hour: above the rate, at the rate, or below.
Maya audits her last 14 evenings.
12 hours of freelance editing at $40 an hour: below.
6 hours on a friend's free favor: below.
3 hours on her own newsletter: above (her one project).
1 hour on the podcast: below (not her one bet).
Most of her week sat below the rate.
✋ Step 3 — Cut everything below the rate this week.
Think of clearing a junk drawer.
You can't shut it until the stuff you don't need is actually out.
Send the short no.
Finish the half-done gig, then take no more.
Hand back the favor.
Maya tells the recruiter: "I don't take freelance right now."
She tells her cousin: "I can't take side projects this season."
She pours every freed evening into the one project that compounds.
And the newsletter? It ships its first ten issues that quarter. Boom.
The prompt below runs the Absurd Hourly Rate on everything on your plate.
You just tell it what's there.
🧸 One absurd rate + one ruthless no = a calendar that finally makes real progress.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt or just run as is, your AI sidekick will use the example values and will give output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — short sentences, plain words, zero hype.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
Inputs:
Everything on my plate right now (list every side project, freelance gig, favor, and "I really should" task):
{e.g.
- weekly newsletter on building a side hustle (issue 3)
- paid templates shop (one file half-built)
- a podcast in pre-production (2 unedited recordings)
- freelance landing-page gigs when a recruiter pings me
- helping a friend with their side project
}
For Audience: {e.g. employed people building a side business at night}
For Outcome: {e.g. a one-page filter I can pin above my desk so the next ping gets a clean no in 30 seconds}
Outputs:
PART 1 — The absurd hourly rate: pick a rate between $500 and $5,000 per hour that matches the future version of me. Write it as a one-line rule.
PART 2 — The audit: for each item on my plate, tag it above the rate, at the rate, or below. Be ruthless. The freelance gig is below. The favor is below. The one project that compounds is above.
PART 3 — The cuts: for each below-rate item, write a 1-2 sentence no I can copy-paste. Short. Friendly. No apology. No "let me get back to you in a month."
Then in two sentences, tell me the smallest possible move I can make this week on my one above-rate project — even if I have only 90 minutes of focused time before Sunday night.
One number worth living by.
One week of hours, all written down.
One project that finally ships.
That's it, my fellow mavericks!
Yours 'helping you turn your obsession into income 10x faster with your AI sidekick' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️