inverse earnings

temmet is a free browser-based meter — no accounts, no tracking. The meter is rate × time. Whether the climbing number represents what you're spending or what you're earning depends entirely on how you frame it.

for who

Anyone who wants positive feedback for time-on-task. Writers facing a blank page. Solo founders grinding. People with goals that pay by the hour and need a visible incentive to keep working.

the job

Watch a number climb that represents what you're earning, in real time. Use the same machine that meeting-cost users use, but with the polarity flipped in your head.

how to map it

1. Set your hourly rate to your earning rate. If you bill at $X/hr, that. If you're salaried, your effective rate (gross compensation ÷ working hours).
2. Add yourself as the only participant. Advanced mode, one row, your name, your rate.
3. Save the setup as a template so you don't re-enter every time.
4. Start the meter when you start working. Watch the number climb.
5. End when you're done. The session lands in history. Compare days.

the remix

The framing is the whole feature.

• Stack a "good day" target. If you want to earn $X today, glance at the running total to see how close you are. The number is concrete; vague feelings about productivity aren't.
• Stop the meter when you're not earning. Stepping away to make coffee? space to pause. The honesty of the number is what makes it motivating — if it includes hours where you weren't actually working, it stops meaning anything.
• Use history as a daily streak record. Sort by date, scroll back. Compare this week to last week. The shape of the data is itself feedback.
• The default session name as a daily goal. "What am I shipping today?" — pre-fills before each session, forces a daily intention.

tips

• This works best on independent work — writing, coding, design. Meeting-heavy days will feel less motivating because the rate during meetings is the same as the rate during deep work, and meetings feel less like "earning". The fix is honesty: pause the meter during meetings if they're not directly billable.
• The PDF report of your last month is a surprisingly useful self-pep-talk — a reminder of how much focused time you've actually put in.
• This isn't accounting. The number is a motivator, not a P&L line. If you bill clients, use the freelance billing recipe for the actual record.

about a real "green mode"

A flag that flips the meter color and label set ("total earned" instead of "total cost") is a small, future-friendly feature. The math is identical. If you'd find this useful, it's a design / labeling change, not a math change. Until then: same machine, opposite mindset.