No Sense Friday: Time Billionaire
Seconds are worth more than dollars
Would you rather have a billion dollars or a billion seconds?
If something takes you a million seconds to do, that’s about 12 days. If you need a billion seconds, however, that’s 31 years — without accounting for sleep.
Equating seconds to dollars, a billion dollars is worth 31 years of your time. Would you make that trade?
A reader once asked investor Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano: “If you could switch places with Warren Buffett, would you do it? You’d be one of earth’s richest people — but you’d be 93 years old.” In the money, yet out of time.
If you’re in your 20s, you’re a time multi-billionaire. You likely have more than two billion seconds left. If you’re 50, you could still be a time billionaire. How much would Warren Buffett give to get back those seconds?
“The time billionaires are the wealthiest among us, yet they fail to recognize the wealth that they enjoy,” Pomp writes.
The time billionaire can have a time horizon that is counted in decades. The time billionaire can afford to be patient. The time billionaire can slowly compound money over time. There is no rush. There is no compressed timeline that clouds the judgement of a time billionaire. They can recover from almost any mistake. The time billionaire is unshakeable in a sense.
If you're a time billionaire, don't fret about your lack of dollars. Embrace your advantage in time. Unlike the pieces of paper we all covet, each of us only gets to spend their seconds once.
-Nik
About No Sense Friday: Most people live for Friday. There’s nothing wrong with downtime, but if weekends are all you look forward to, chances are, something’s amiss. That’s why Friday is the most important day to call out things that make no sense — because in a way, the concept of ‘Friday’ itself is one of those things.
A good life is lived every day, not just once a week.
You hear "Time is money" all the time. But "Money is time" is also true. If you hate your job, you are undervaluing your life. Whatever you buy costs you your time. Food and shelter are a necessary trade-off. That expensive new car or a 15th sweater may not be.