The Time Billionaire

Whenever we think of wealth, we think of money or other monetary assets. A few years ago, I came across this concept of a Time Billionaire coined by?Graham Duncan,?Co-Founder of?East Rock Capital, LLC. I have used this concept in my presentations to help people understand the difference between a million and a billion. We sometimes think that they are the same, but in reality they are far apart:

?? The number of seconds in a day ﹦ 86,400
?? One Million seconds ﹦11.5 Days
?? One Billion seconds ﹦ 31.5 Years        

Graham presented this concept in an episode with Tim Ferriss , he said:

A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is slightly over 31 years... I feel like in our culture, we’re so obsessed, as a culture, with money. 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? Because I was thinking at various points of my career, I might have sold the next five years for something.

The critical point is that time is our most valuable asset. When we give someone our time, we can never take it back. When we are young, we are really rich with time. At 20, you have around 2 Billion seconds left, assuming an average age of 80. At 65, you only have half a billion seconds left on Earth.

Tim Urban built this nice chart your life in weeks. Now, create a chart for your life and start putting key moments in there. What happens when you look at the chart after a few years? Are you proud or are you disappointed?

Another interesting chart from Our World in Data shows how we spend our time:

Some key points from this chart:

1. As we age, we spend more time alone. Learn how to be alone and be the best company you can be. Embrace solitude.
2. There is only one relationship in life called "The Life Partner," so make sure you have the right one. This is the only relationship in which your time spent with them will increase with age.
3. Your time with friends, family, and children will decrease with age as they will have their own lives to live, so make sure to cherish those moments. Enjoy those magic moments.

Summary

In summary, don't play this game of I will do this when I turn this age; "I will get fit after this age," "I will get a degree after 30", and "I can't wait until I am 45 to enjoy the luxuries". Live in the moment.

When doing professional coaching, I ask to talk about compound time activities:

Ask yourself, "What did I do this year that I will be proud of 5 years later? or what did I do 5 years ago that I am still proud of today?"

Now, you can extend this to your entire life. Imagine being asked to create a life video for your funeral. With an average age of 78-80, you can have about 60 years of adult life. In the life video, you can only have one second per video. So, what does your 60-second video look like? Are you happy with it? If not, what will you do so that you have better moments to include in the video?

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