Section II: Time Wealth
Create Your Center
“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” – Jim Rohn
Time is the ultimate democracy. Some may have more money, some may have more resources, and some may have been born into better situations, but the playing field of life is leveled by the amount of time we have in a day.
Our lives may be short. Our lives may be long. But over the course of a 24-hour period, everyone is afforded the same opportunity.
The true meaning of Time Wealth, then, is extracting the most personal value from your time as you can.
Working in the tech industry, you meet a lot of interesting characters who are driven by a lot of different values. Some love the potential of a big exit, some are enamored with innovation and change, some like to sell the hottest new product, some just need a job, while others love the application of technology in daily life.
Programmers fall under the last category. They love the style and capabilities of technology, and are interested in tearing it apart and seeing how it ticks. This is why most programmers are “gamers,” and love to play computer games, console games, and mobile games.
Understanding why programmers love to game so much is a question of the chicken or the egg: some gamers become programmers because they want to understand how games work or want to create a game of their own, while some programmers become gamers because once they learn how to code, they understand the beauty and hard work that goes into creating a game.
Regardless of how a programmer got into gaming, one thing remains: they love to game. Sweeping generalization? Yes, but all generalizations are based in truth.
Many of the programmers I know will spend every waking hour of free time, sometimes until 4-5am, on a work night, gaming.
And when you’re someone, like me, who views the maximization of time as the most productivity you can get out of it, gaming makes no sense. What a waste of time, I used to think!
Let me stress “used to.” When you begin to understand the meaning of Time Wealth, you realize that gaming, to people who love it, is the richest way they can spend their time.
Here I was scheming business ideas, writing blog posts, studying finance, and looking at these programmers like they had no ambition. When in reality, by gaming, they were extracting as much - if not more - value from their time as I was, not to mention, they were probably happier with the way they spent their time.
I was grinding out my days in the pursuit of a purpose and passion that they’d already found!
I mention this because at its core, becoming time rich isn’t a matter of spending your time in ways that will make you more money. Time Wealth is spending your time in ways that will return the most personal value to your life.
The most personal value could be money. The most personal value could be a feeling or state of mind. The most personal value could even be more time. In essence, Time Wealth is the ability to actively search for your passion and purpose, and once found, actively live out your passion and purpose.
Keep this in mind as you read the following chapters. As Jim Rohn again reminds us, “you don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.”
And by bringing the most value to the hour, your payment is the full enjoyment of your time, and therefore, your life.