Morning, CEO!
I recently read The 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom, and it’s the kind of book that makes you feel intellectually superior while simultaneously realizing you’ve been playing the wrong video game for the last 15 years.
If you think hitting a specific number in your bank account will finally make the Anxiety Birds in your head stop screeching, I have bad news. The scoreboard is broken. Let’s fix it.
1. The “I’ll Be Happy When...” Trap
I have this recurring delusion. It goes like this: “Once I finally ship this one specific feature, then I will be a calm, enlightened being who drinks herbal tea and never stress-eats cheese.”
Spoiler: I ship the feature. I eat the cheese anyway.
Sahil Bloom calls this the “Arrival Fallacy.”
It’s a glitch in our human operating system. We treat happiness like a destination on Google Maps. We think if we just drive hard enough, we’ll “arrive” at Satisfaction.
But biology is a cruel prankster. The moment you arrive, your brain moves the finish line.
There is a story in the book about a guy who sold his tech company for $100 million. To celebrate, he rents a mega-yacht. He is drinking expensive champagne. He has “won” capitalism.
Then, he looks over the railing.
Parked next to him is another yacht. But this one is twice as big. It has a helicopter pad.
In approximately 0.4 seconds, the guy goes from “I am the King of the World” to “My boat is a dinghy and I am a failure.”
This is why the Financial Wealth scoreboard is broken. There is always a bigger boat. There is always a guy with a helicopter pad. If you are only optimizing for the “Money” column in your life spreadsheet, you are playing a game you are mathematically guaranteed to lose.
2. You Are a Time Billionaire (For Now)
Let’s look at a different column in the spreadsheet: Time Wealth.
The Ancient Greeks had two words for time: Chronos (the terrifying ticking clock) and Kairos (the moments you actually remember).
Here is some math that might make you want to stare at a wall for a while:
If you are 30 years old, you have roughly 2 billion seconds left. You are a Time Billionaire.
Now, imagine Warren Buffett. He has roughly $100 billion. He is the Oracle. He is a legend. But he is also 94.
If he offered to trade places with you right now—he gets your 30-year-old body and your 2 billion seconds, and you get his 94-year-old body and his bank account—would you do it?
Absolutely not.
You wouldn’t trade your youth to be a geriatric billionaire on life support. This means, logically, your time is worth more to you than $100 billion.
Yet, we give this asset away for free. We sell it for pennies to sit in meetings that could have been emails. We burn it doom-scrolling to see what people we hated in high school are doing for dinner.
The most painful part of the book is the “Death Math.”
Let’s say your parents are 65 and live across the country. You visit them once a year. If they live to 80, you don’t have “15 years” left with them.
You have 15 visits.
You can count them on your hands and toes. When you frame Time Wealth like a depleting inventory, you stop wasting it on things that don’t matter.
3. The Funeral Test & The “1”
The other columns in the new scoreboard are Social, Mental, and Physical wealth.
Social Wealth isn’t your LinkedIn connection count. It passes the Funeral Test.
Close your eyes (after you read this sentence). Imagine your funeral. Who is sitting in the front row? Who is actually crying versus just checking their watch?
The client you replied to at 11 PM on a Sunday is not in the front row. The boss you were afraid of is not in the front row.
Prioritize the people who will actually show up.
Mental Wealth is about “Energy Vampires.” Some tasks (and people) give you energy. Some suck the life force out of you until you are a husk. Wealth is structuring your “Agency of One” so you spend your days doing things that actually recharge your battery.
And finally, Physical Wealth.
Think of your life as a long number. Your money, your status, your career achievements... those are all zeros.
1,000,000,000.
Your health is the “1” at the front.
If you remove the “1,” it doesn’t matter how many zeros you have. You just have zero.
This brings us back to Financial Wealth. In this new model, money is last.
Why? Because money is just a tool.
If you use money to buy a bigger boat to impress people you don’t like, you are using the tool wrong.
But if you use the tool to buy back your Time (so you can have those 15 visits), or to facilitate Social connection (buying the plane ticket), or to fix your Physical health (better food, gym)... then you are actually winning.
The Bottom Line:
The “Arrival Fallacy” is a lie. There is no destination where the music swells and the credits roll.
Stop trying to max out the Money stat while letting the Time and Health stats crash to zero. That’s how you lose the game.
Check your “Death Math.” Call your parents.
Links:
https://www.sahilbloom.com
https://www.amazon.com/Types-Wealth-Transformative-Guide-Design/dp/059372318X
