You Are a Time Billionaire!
Anthony Pompliano shares an important idea from a past Tim Ferris podcast with Graham Duncan, the co-founder of East Rock Capital.
“It perfectly breaks down the difference between a time billionaire and a dollar billionaire. One has financial resources and the other has life resources. Our society overvalues the former, but undervalues the latter.”
Here is an excerpt of that conversation:
Graham Duncan: A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is slightly over 31 years. And I was thinking about — Tyler Cowen has a thing about cultural billionaires –
Tim Ferriss: Marginal Revolution?
Graham Duncan: Yeah. In one of his books, he talks about cultural billionaires. I feel like in our culture, we’re so obsessed, as a culture, with money. And we deify dollar billionaires in a way that — it’d be nice to co-opt that term the way Tyler Cowen did with cultural billionaires. And I was thinking of time billionaires that when I see, sometimes, 20-year-olds — the thought I had was they probably have two billion seconds left. But they aren’t relating to themselves as time billionaires.
And I was thinking about how if you could — what would Rupert Murdoch, who’s worth $20 billion — he’s 87 years old. What would he pay if he could take the next five years of someone’s 20-year-old healthy body, mind, etc.? And for that 20-year-old, how would they price it?
How will you spend your next 1 billion seconds?
We glorify hustle culture and the entrepreneurs working insane hours to get rich. There is nothing wrong with working hard to achieve big goals, but it’s important to acknowledge that there is a cost.
Steve Jobs and Tony Hsieh were billionaires that accomplished a lot on their short time on this planet. Were they happy? It doesn’t look like it.
There are plenty of examples of people that reached the pinnacle of their careers, yet took their own lives. Maybe it’s time we change our definitions of success?
- Five years in your twenties or thirties is worth infinitely more than five in your eighties. Waiting until you retire to travel the world or follow other dreams is a risky proposition. What if you die before retirement? Traveling at the peak of your health and energy is a lot more fun.
- Are you willing to trade time with your young children now for more wealth in the future? You’ll never get those early years back and your children will be permanently affected by your choice.
- Are you willing to sacrifice your personal relationships to get ahead in your business and career? What will that cost you in overall life satisfaction?
Be careful about what you seek. You just might find it.
Shared in the IdeaEconomy.net startup newsletter.
