Time Paradox: You are born as a “Time Billionaire”, you exchange your time to earn wealth. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth.

Wealth has unlimited upside whereas time is the most scarce, least understood, and most undervalued resource. Why? Let's explore.

Graham Duncan, the co-founder of East Rock Capital coined the phrase “Time Billionaire”.

“A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is slightly over 31 years. we’re so obsessed, as a culture, with money. And we deify dollar billionaires  but we aren’t relating ourselves as time billionaires”

The point is we consistently undervalue our most precious resource – "Time"

The wealthy buy time spending money but the poor sell time in exchange for money.

You can compound wealth over time but there is no compounding of time.

I bet Warren Buffet or Rupert Murdoch will be ready to exchange billion dollars for billion seconds.

The central banks and government policy can unilaterally alter your wealth by increasing or decreasing interest rates or changing fiscal policy.

But there is no central authority mortal or divine that can increase your time, it is unidirectional.

In pursuit of infinite upside, we end up recklessly spending finite time.

We are inherently good at valuing items that we can see, touch and feel but incapable of valuing imaginary abstract items such as time.

Therefore, the focus should be on spending time wisely.

An average human life expectancy is ~75 years or 2.5 billion seconds. We are all born as time billionaires, let's break it down

0 – 0.5b seconds (0 – 15 years): The child is dependent on their parents for the first half a billion seconds and it is foundational and sets the platform for the rest of the life.

0.5B- 1.5b seconds (15 – 45 years): The primetime spent learning, traveling, experiencing, establishing identity, finding purpose, profession, finding a life partner, and raising children.  Time is mostly spent exchanging time to earn money to create wealth.

1.5B – 2.5B seconds (45 – 75 years).  Still a time billionaire and 30 years is a long time. But down to the last billion seconds and the clock is ticking. In theory, there is a lot of freedom in the last billion seconds to increase the quality of time spent.

How should I value my last billion seconds? Not an easy question to ponder during summer break.

1. It is probably time to replace "money" with "time" i.e. spend time like you spend money (Carefully).

2. Invest money to generate higher RoE - return on experience on time spent.

What do you think?

Note:

1. Views are personal.
2. Special thanks to Graham and Naval for the inspiration
3. Join my learning journey, learn, and laugh every day.

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