I agree that when you have a set salary, it’s not as straightforward to translate time saved to extra money made. However, it’s not impossible.

When I worked for a university on a set (shamefully low) salary, I worked 165 hours on a side project through a colleague who had his own one-person company. I made more through that (one-month-equivalent work) than three months’ worth of my salary.

That was the genesis of my resigning my university position a couple of years later to take up a job at a small engineering services company and, another couple of years after that, starting my own one-person consulting practice.

That was the best financial and professional move I ever made.