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This article is an exploration of the concept of time and the abundance of time as wealth that is so essential for personal growth.
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Concept of Time
Time is a complex concept – in science and day to day life.
Nature of time is perhaps the most significant mysteries yet to be fully understood by humans.
Our experience of time – as a uniform independent entity present throughout the universe, having a definite past, that has created the present and will flow irreversibly towards the future, like an arrow, is not just flawed but has been proven, scientifically, to be wrong.
If you are interested in understanding the concept of time, I strongly recommend the excellent book The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli. The book brilliantly deconstructs time as we know it, and reconstructs time as it is, or as our best guess of it is at present.
According to Carlo Rovelli, time appears for us because of our blurred understanding of this vast universe, and the resulting ignorance determines the existence of a particular variable – thermal time. The part of the world we belong to interacts with the rest in a way that entropy is lower in one direction of our thermal time. The arrow of time (past -> present -> future) is real, but perspectival: the entropy of the world concerning us increases with our thermal time, and we see the occurrence of things ordered in this variable, which we call ‘time.’ This growth of entropy distinguishes the past from the future, creating the form of time that is so familiar to us.
Other beings (aliens, etc.) may not have any concept of time or may have access to time as another dimension moving effortlessly between past, present, and future. Reality is indeed stranger than fiction (or science fiction).
However, this article is not about the scientific exploration of time.
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In my previous article Wealth: A Concept of Abundance, we looked at types of wealth and identified time (or freedom) as one of the four categories. As a part of this article in my Personal Growth Framework, we are going to explore time in a form familiar to all of us in our day to day life.
Definitions
A few definitions to ensure we are using the same language and have the same understanding of the discussion.
Time refers to “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.“
Freedom refers to “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants” or “the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.”
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Life is Defined by Time
Let’s start with a thought experiment.
Who is more wealthy – Warren Buffett, or you?
Warren Buffett is 89 years old and has, coincidentally, USD 88.9 billion worth of financial wealth at the time of writing this article.
There are four questions in this thought experiment:
- Would you exchange your age with Buffett in exchange for his billions?
- Would Buffett consider this a good deal?
- Would you?
- Who is wealthy in this context, and why?
My answers (and hopefully the answers of all my discerning readers younger than 89):
- Would you exchange your age with Buffett in exchange for his billions? Nope
- Would Buffett consider this a good deal? Buffett, an intrepid value investor, would grab this deal.
- Would you? Nope
- Who is wealthy in this context, and why? Me, because I have time on my side. And time is money 🙂
It is a simple (may even sound silly to some readers) thought experiment. However, it provides an insight.
The thing we value in life is life itself.
Life as defined by the time we have in this world.
By this measure, a vast majority of us are substantially wealthier than most of the billionaires on this planet. Till, of course, someone finds a way to extend life or immortality itself.
We rarely consider wealth in terms of abundance of time at our disposal.
How well do we use this abundant wealth of time at our disposal?
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Abundance of Time is Wealth
How many of us track our financial wealth (income-generating assets as defined in the earlier article), assets (anything valuable like bank accounts, property, gold, bitcoins) and expenses diligently?
How many of us track our time as diligently as money?
Time is the only real resource we possess since our birth.
We do not know the length of time at our disposal when we are born; there is a definite beginning and an inevitable end. Time we have is finite.
In this world, we experience time as flow. We experience it as an arrow from the past, coursing through the present, and flowing towards a future. There is no other direction of travel of time available to us humans. Time is irreversible.
All the actions we have taken (or not taken) constitute our past. We, humans, cannot revisit our past except in memories. Time that has passed is gone forever. Time is non-replenishable.
It is the only resource that is allocated equally among all humans. Each of us gets 24 hours a day and 365 days a year (366 this year!) whether we are rich or poor. Time is distributed evenly.
If anything we possess is finite, non-replenishable, and it is irreversible, it should be the most preciously guarded resource that’s stingily and intentionally allocated to purposeful and fulfilling activities.
However, my observation is that time is the resource most of us generously waste every single day.
Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, said two millennia ago
People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.
Think of the time spent watching TV/Netflix, on social media, reading newspapers (yes, newspapers!), meaningless meetings, overthinking and procrastination instead of action, and in pursuit of numerous other non-productive activities. If your goodwill and time has been sucked dry by someone, remember that life is defined by time.
Anyone who steals your time is stealing your life.
We are more careful with money than we are with time. Money is, however, not finite and is replenish-able, given enough focus and enough time! In our prioritization between money and time, time should win hands down.
We carefully calculate and review ROI (return on investment) of different financial assets before investing money. We should calculate and consider the ROI on our time with equal care.
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Time and Economics
Economics is a social science that studies how society chooses to allocate its scarce resources, which have alternative uses, to provide goods and services for present and future consumption.
Time is a scarce resource with many alternate uses and can be productively used to create valuable things for us and society now and in the future.
The economy works without any human intervention by allocating scarce resources to productive uses based on signals provided by the price of the resource, determined by the competition between those demanding the resource and those supplying the resource in a market.
The scarcer the resource, the higher is its price. The more ample the supply of any resource, the lower is its price.
Time is exchanged for money in the markets of this world every single day.
The owner of a business invests time building a business in return (or hope of a return) for money. This return is more commonly known as profit.
An employee or worker works for someone else. Someone else is usually the owner of a business (or government or non-profits). In economic terms, a job involves exchanging time for money.
- The employer pays money called salary or wages (just a different word for ‘rent‘) to hire employee’s time to perform a set of tasks.
- Employee sells/rents time in return for salary.
An interesting thought on this:
Money can only buy you some of your own time, but it can buy you a near limitless amount of the time of other people.
@mmay3r on Twitter
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Time as an Investment
Most people start their working life by selling the only thing they truly possess – their time.
It is essential to consider time as an intentional and purposeful investment decision every time you allocate it to an activity.
Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, wrote in the classic On the Shortness of Life.
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.
Be ruthless with your time and the activities you allocate your time to. Time allocation is more critical than portfolio allocation.
Time is critical to the concept of compounding in investing. Compounding makes time your ally. It allows a small initial investment to become significant as the return on the initial investment is re-investing continuously over a long period, thus generating return on return. Apply the concept of compounding not only in financial investments but also in knowledge and relationships.
The best way to invest is to invest regularly for an extended time. Time diversification is the least understood.
@dmuthuk on Twitter
What should we invest our time in?
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Invest Time in Happiness
I think the only worthwhile return on investment of a precious, finite, non-replenishable resource like time should be happiness.
What are the sources of happiness?
Sources of Happiness
Health
Health is a form of wealth. Though modern medicine can work wonders, if you lose health, there is nothing that can help you regain it. Health is physical health and also mental health.
Relationships
Building long-lasting relationships – family, friends, and other work-related relationships – are a source of happiness. A lot of joy in life comes from the feeling of belonging and a sense of community. Nurturing relationships is a good investment of our time.
Learn skills to serve society
Society requires productive members to enable it to solve problems, prosper and grow. Skills allows us to be of service to the society in which we live. Building skills requires learning. Being able to learn, unlearn, and relearn continuously is one of the most critical skills today.
The returns on any time you invest in yourself has the potential to generate infinite returns. There is no other investment opportunity in this whole world that is better than building our skills and capabilities.
Don’t trust my word on this; listen to the advice from the two best financial investors in this world:
The most important investment you can make is in yourself.
Warren Buffett
Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day – if you live long enough – like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.
Charlie Munger
A lot of people give up active learning once they enter working life. That’s the wrong approach, particularly when the human civilization is putting an increasing premium on education, knowledge, and skills as against accidents of birth and heredity that were the norm just a century ago.
What should you learn?
You should learn what Naval Ravikant, the founder of AngelList, terms as specific knowledge. Specific Knowledge is something that ‘feels like play to you but is work for others.’
Being a productive member of society gives a sense of purpose and fulfillment by enabling us to serve a purpose higher than ourselves.
Life requires time and effort. That is to say, when we eliminate time and effort, we eliminate life’s pleasures.
Shunmyo Masuno, Zen: The Art of Simple Living
Money
Lots of money will not create happiness, but the absence of money can be a source of misery.
An excellent piece of advice is to
Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.
Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
Financial wealth is about creating assets that generate income without you spending time. Invest your time in creating such income-generating assets. Wealth generates income while you are sleeping.
Poor people spend their time to save money.
Rich people spend their money to save time.
@Kpaxs on Twitter
Financial wealth created with focus and discipline over many years can be the source of significant freedom, which is another source of happiness.
Freedom
No people can be truly happy if they do not feel that they are choosing the course of their life.
World Happiness Report 2012
Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Lykke
Time is distributed equally among all of us – each day, all of us get 1440 minutes, and each week all of us get 168 hours. However, we have different levels of freedom when it comes to how we spend our time.
Bulk of this time is spent on work, on our relationships, and health (sleeping).
Work – The more your money works for you while you are sleeping, the less is the mandatory demand on your time to earn a living, and the more freedom you will have to choose how to spend your time.
Families/Relationships – Nurturing relationships, bringing up children, taking care of our parents, etc. are the typical demands on our time.
Health – Sleep, essential maintenance of our body and brain, consumes one-third of our time. Not getting adequate sleep can be a source of several physical and mental health issues.
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The Art of Time Management
I don’t intend to get into the details of the art of time management as it merits an article of its own.
However, I am keen to address the persistent complaints of ‘lack of time’ to do achieve a change in life. For example, exercise, learning a new skill, and so on.
Let’s see how much time a typical working adult has each week. Luckily time is equally distributed, so all of us have 168 hours.
Health: 63 hours
- Sleep: 56 hours (8 hours a day, 7 days a week)
- Hygiene: 7 hours (1 hour a day, 7 days a week)
Work: 55 hours
- Actual working hours: 45 (9 hours a day; 5 days a week)
- Commuting to work: 10 (2 hours a day; 5 days a week)
Relationships: 35 hours
- Family: 28 hours (4 hours a day, 7 days a week)
- Friends/Colleagues: 7 hours (1 hour per day; 7 days a week)
Remaining time: 14 hours
Enough to spend on
- Exercise: 3.5 hours (0.5 hours a day, 7 days a week)
- Learning a new skill/hobby: 7 (1 hour per day, 7 days a week)
- Remaining 3.5 hours to do as you please
The above is just an example. You can do your math based on your situation. There is nothing right or wrong about it; your personal situation and your priorities in life should drive the things you spend your time.
These 14 hours weekly invested in a disciplined way adds up to 728 hours for a year and equals an entire months (entire 30 days of 24 hours) of time.
There is never a perfect time to do anything meaningful in life.
Lack of time is usually a lack of priorities.
Here’s a piece of good advice on prioritizing time from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits.
Will it save me time in the future, or will it cost me time in the future?
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Recommended Books on Time
One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.
Carl Sagan
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
On The Shortness Of Time by Seneca
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Essay on The Nature of Firm by Ronald Coase.
The essay or its summary on Wikipedia is essential reading for anyone employed.
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Awesome post this one and all you share, I do read it but didn’t realise comment section below! Thanks a Ton and please keep sharing!!!
Great post!
I like the concept of freedom (time and money). Time can be compounded is a great concept and can be leveraged to get freedom. What i understand by true freedom is getting rid of the dependency on you and something which has existence beyond you.