Did you know we only have about 4000 weeks of time in our life? While the traditional definition of success always focused on money, status, and possessions, it’s a lie. The only thing that is truly limited in life is time. It doesn’t matter how rich and powerful a person is. That person also only has 4000 weeks just like you and I.
True success is learning how to become a Time Billionaire, a person who knows how to spend his or her limited time on earth to do what makes them happy. As I re-read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s definition of success that was given to me since Business School, I know what really make me happy is about freedom to choose and about being able to contribute to others, as a mother daughter, wife, friend, mentor, manager, coach, and blogger 😉
We Are All Capable of Becoming a Time Billionaire
No matter where you are in your career, you can choose to aim to be “rich and free” with your time. Do you know what makes you happy? No one in their death bed ever wished they could have worked more or made more money. Instead many wished they knew when to stop working and spent more time with family and friends.
Having taken a few “breaks” in my career, I have learned happiness also doesn’t come from doing nothing. It’s actually quite boring to do nothing. My limit is around 6 weeks. After 6 weeks of leisure, I am completely restless and again unhappy that I have a ton of time and nothing meaningful to do. Each of us has to learn what it is we truly want to do with our time. I am still learning and experimenting. I hope you are too.
Let’s Measure Success with a New Metric
Becoming a time millionaire is about changing our perspective and how we make decisions. Instead of measuring our success by our compensation $$ alone, perhaps measure it instead by $$ per hours worked + stressed.
Person A, Sam, could make a $100K a year working 40 hours a week and little stress. Person B, Sean, could make $200K a year working 60 hours a week and stressing another 2o hours a week. Who do you think is better off? Based on the new metric, both Sam and Sean make equal amount of $$/hours worked + stressed ($100K/ 40 hour = $200K / 80 hours of work and stress)
From the perspective of becoming a Time Billionaire, I would say Sam is better off.
- She has twice as much time in a week to focus on other things than work.
- Her lack of stress likely will promote a longer life and health. So she likely will live longer than Sean
- She already make enough to be happy. A 2010 study from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School found that, up to $75,000, each boost in income increased participants’ happiness. But after that, bringing home more income ceased to matter in their overall life satisfaction.
This of course depends on the work they do and what that means to them. If Sean is spending 80 hours trying to cure cancer and Sam works as an office manager for a law firm, perhaps the answer is not so clear. At the end of the day, your success depends on your perspective of what makes you happy.
When Should We Stop Chasing the Next Promotion and Higher Pay
For those of us in mid or late to our career, do we know how to get out of the “rat race” and do what really matters to us? I am still struggling with this. It comes down to at what $$ amount in asset is “enough.” Do you know your number? Mine seems to be moving. Every time I reach a number I thought was enough, I move it up more. I feel addicted to accumulation. It is also what I have been conditioned to do for 25+ years.
Hubby sent me this email below last week he got from “Pomp”, author a highly popular crypto newletter. Pomp is Anthony Pompliano, a 33 year old investor in Crypto whose net worth is $200M in 2021 and only started investing since 2016. I share what he wrote as he realizes early money is not the right goal in life.
While you may say, that’s easy for him to say. He is the top 0.1% in wealth. I would say his message in his letter also applies to us and provide a different perspective on what’s important in life. We may not have millions in the bank, but we all have equal amount of time on this earth. It’s worth our time to figure out how we want to best spent it.
Letter to Investors from Pomp – Focusing on the What’s Most Important
To investors,
Last week, I told the limited partners at Pomp Investments that I would be returning all outside capital at the end of the year and would be converting my investment activities into a family office. The response to this communication was incredibly powerful so I figured that I should share the decision publicly. No matter your occupation or life goals, my hope is that the letter below can help you.
Here is the letter that I sent to the limited partners at Pomp Investments:
To investors,
Hope each of you is doing well. I am writing this letter to inform you that I will be returning all uninvested capital at the end of this year and retiring from managing any new outside capital moving forward. I will be converting all of my investment activities into a family office. This decision is the product of many weeks of deep thinking, so I wanted to share my logic with you below.
We live in a world filled with endless dopamine hits. Every second, there is a social media feed to scroll, notification to check, or incoming message on the 10+ messaging apps we have on our phones. The constant roar competing for our attention creates an addiction that is hard to break for many of us.
This digital addiction prevents us from stepping away to think. Unsurprisingly, if we are unable to find the time to think, then the art of long-term thinking gets completely lost. We are simply hamsters running on the wheel looking for the next dopamine hit.
I took a few weeks recently to consciously step away from the digital world for a few hours a day. It allowed me to think deeply about what I was optimizing for over the long-term. I don’t define “long-term” as a few months or a few years, but as decades.
This process continued to lead me back to two key points. First, the idea of a billionaire. Much of the world measures billionaire status by the number of dollars that a person possesses, but the measurement of billionaires based on dollars is not the right way to look at it in my opinion.
Graham Duncan coined the phrase “Time Billionaire” and it has stuck with me ever since I read about it. The idea is that time is the only asset in the world that can’t be purchased. Warren Buffett is worth tens of billions of dollars, but no young person would switch lives with him if they had to be in their 90s. In turn, the young person is wealthier than Warren Buffett because of time.
I’m 33 years old. If I am fortunate enough to follow the average life expectancy of an American today, I still have more than one billion seconds left in my life (more than 31.5 years). I’ll have to avoid catastrophe, but the odds are in my favor.
The funny thing is that I’ll continue to increase my financial net worth, but I’ll continue to lose my time net worth. Most of my peers and colleagues are well into their 40s, 50s, and 60s. They’ve been chasing financial wealth for the majority of their life, yet they have wasted their wealth of time with reckless abandon.
I’m committed to making sure that doesn’t happen. Ultimately, this is why I’m returning all external investor capital and will only be managing my personal portfolio moving forward. It will allow me to spend more of my time with my family. It will allow me to side-step the constant incentive to raise more money, charge higher fees, make more investments, and make wealthy people even wealthier.
This brings me to my second key point — educating the average citizen. I don’t have it all figured out, but I have been able to build a knowledge base that allows me to walk away on top at a very young age. I’ve seen the impact that I can have by sharing this information with other people and it is the single greatest impact I believe I can have right now, so I’ll continue to create content with a focus on lifting more people out of their current situation.
So what does this all mean for your investments?
The short answer is that you’ll be in a good position. A number of the funds that I have fully invested are top performers. The portfolio that I have built with your capital continues to look more attractive every day as well. I will continue to manage the investments that have been made and will look for opportunities to liquidate positions as they become viable and make financial sense.
For the uninvested capital, I’ll be returning 100% of that to each of you at the end of this year. And there will be no more capital calls moving forward. In essence, we have reached the end of our journey together in terms of new investments.
Now many of you will be curious about whether I will be walking away from investing completely and the answer is no. I’ll continue to invest my personal capital into funds and early-stage opportunities. There is something freeing about being able to invest your own money. You have the ultimate skin in the game.
When I started investing full time in 2016, I barely had enough money to make pathetically small investments. I needed the outside capital. It was the only way that I could get in the game. Fortunately, the situation has changed, and now I can devote my time to other things that I want to accomplish.
This letter is not an easy one to write. I’ve worked diligently for years to build the relationships and capital base that I am now walking away from. I know deep down that this is the right decision though. As Anna Quindlen said in her 1999 Mount Holyoke Commencement Speech:
“When I quit the New York Times to be a full-time mother, the voices of the world said that I was nuts. When I quit it again to be a full-time novelist, they said I was nuts again. But I am not nuts. I am happy. I am successful on my own terms. Because if your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all. Remember the words of Lily Tomlin: If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.”
It has been an absolute pleasure working with each of you over the years. We have had an incredible run together, but all good things must come to an end. I’m looking forward to the next chapter of my life and spending more time with my family.
Respectfully,
Anthony Pompliano
The response I received from the limited partners at Pomp Investments was incredible. A number of people wrote me to share that they had made similar decisions over the years and it was the single greatest thing they did in hindsight. Others shared words of encouragement, along with small nuggets of wisdom that have helped them enjoy their families and friends more.
… I’m really excited about spending more time with my family. …Time is precious. Spend it wisely. Focus is a superpower. Enjoy your family. And just do the shit that makes you happy. Hope everyone has a great start to their week. Talk to you all tomorrow.
-Pomp
At the end of the day….
All of us have a limited time left in our lives. Put down your phones and laptops and give yourself time to think abut what you truly want in life. Why not go after it now? You can get out of the “rat race.” if you make conscious decisions to prioritize time over $$. Create the possibility for yourself that you can do what makes you happy now. Once you have that conviction, the universe will “conspire to help you.”
If you don’t know what it is that makes you happy, it’s also okay. Get on a journey to discover what that is for yourself. That journey while uncomfortable and perhaps filled with uncertainty is still a really good use of your time. Best wishes to your self-discovery journey.
Your comments: Do you want to become a Time Billionaire? Why or Why not? What do you think is the minimum $$ assets to be happy? How are you working towards being happier in life? I look forward to your comments
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