Last Tuesday, I met an objectively poor but subjectively wealthy man.
I was waiting for a delayed flight at a small regional airport, frustrated by the wasted hours, when I struck up a conversation with the elderly janitor mopping the floor nearby. His name was Raj, and when I complained about the delay eating into my packed schedule, he said something that stopped me cold:
"I'm the richest person in this airport right now," he said with a serene smile.
I looked at his worn uniform, his weathered hands, and his simple digital watch, and couldn't help but ask, "How do you figure that?"
His answer has been reverberating in my mind ever since.
The Wealth We Don't Count
"I have eight hours at work each day, but I can think my own thoughts while I mop," Raj explained. "My evenings are mine to spend with my family. My weekends belong entirely to me. I sleep peacefully. My time is mostly my own."
He gestured around the terminal. "Look at all these people. Executives making twenty times my salary, but their phones never stop demanding attention. Their time is sliced into tiny fragments belonging to everyone but themselves. They're always running late for something. Always behind."
He shrugged. "They have money wealth. I have time wealth. And time wealth feels like the more valuable kind once you have enough money for simple needs."
I started looking around the waiting area with new eyes. Sure enough, I saw the physical manifestations of time poverty everywhere:
- The woman in the designer suit nervously bouncing her leg while simultaneously on a conference call and typing furiously on her laptop
- The well-dressed man with bloodshot eyes staring anxiously at the departure board while his phone pinged relentlessly
- A family with expensive luggage, the parents barely registering their children's questions as they both focused intently on their respective screens
And there I was, among them, stewing about a three-hour delay disrupting my meticulously planned schedule.
The Great Money-Time Tradeoff
We live in a culture obsessed with financial metrics. We track GDP, market valuations, personal net worth, and quarterly returns. But we have no common metrics for time wealth.
Consider these familiar patterns:
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The High-Income Time Poverty Trap: As your income rises, your time becomes increasingly fragmented and controlled by others. Each promotion brings more meetings, more responsibilities, and more people who need "just 15 minutes of your time."
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The Status Paradox: Many high-status positions actually represent profound time poverty. The CEO with the corner office is constantly in demand, while the night security guard has hours of uninterrupted time to read, think, or learn.
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The Retirement Mirage: We defer time wealth today for the promise of time wealth tomorrow, but tomorrow is never guaranteed. As Seneca wrote nearly 2,000 years ago: "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it."
The Mathematics of Time Wealth
If we were to create a formula for time wealth, what might it look like?
Time Wealth = (Hours of autonomy) × (Presence quotient) × (Energy level)
Let's break this down:
Hours of autonomy: Time that you control, where you decide what happens and when. This doesn't necessarily mean leisure time—many people experience deep satisfaction from work they've chosen that engages them fully.
Presence quotient: The degree to which you can be fully present in each moment rather than mentally fragmented. High presence means your mind is where your body is.
Energy level: Having free time when you're exhausted isn't true time wealth. Energy is the capacity to engage meaningfully with your time.
By this measure, the janitor I met was indeed extraordinarily wealthy. His job, while physically demanding, left his mind free. His relatively simple life meant fewer fragmented obligations. And his contentment suggested he had energy available for the people and activities he valued.
The Time Wealth Crisis
Here's what frightens me: by all external measures, we should be experiencing a time wealth boom. Technology has automated countless time-consuming tasks. Productivity has soared. We can communicate instantly rather than waiting for letters.
Yet the opposite has happened. We're experiencing what feels like a time wealth recession. Studies show:
- The average knowledge worker checks email 77 times per day
- Office workers are interrupted every 3 minutes
- The average person touches their phone 2,617 times daily
- "Time poverty" is now recognized as a major contributor to rising anxiety rates
How did we end up creating a world that systematically depletes our most precious non-renewable resource?
Reclaiming Your Time Wealth
After my conversation with Raj, I've been experimenting with several time wealth practices. Here are five that have shown promise:
1. Conduct a Time Wealth Audit
For one week, track your hours based on:
- Who controls this time? (You or others?)
- How present are you during this time? (Fully engaged or fragmented?)
- How is your energy during these hours? (High, medium, or depleted?)
This creates a baseline measurement of your current time wealth.
2. Create Time Wealth Boundaries
Identify activities that generate genuine time wealth and protect them ferociously. For me, this includes two hours of reading each morning before touching my phone and one completely unscheduled day each week.
3. Practice Presence
Time wealth requires actually experiencing your time, not just having it in theory. Simple presence practices like taking three conscious breaths before starting a new activity can dramatically increase your subjective experience of time.
4. Reduce Time Debt
Just as financial gurus suggest eliminating money debt, identify and reduce your "time debts"—commitments that systematically deplete your time wealth with minimal return.
5. Value Your Time Literally
Calculate what an hour of your time is worth to you (not just what others pay you for it), and refuse to spend that time on anything that doesn't return equal value—whether financial, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual.
The Philosophical Question
All of this points to a deeper philosophical question: What if we've been measuring wealth entirely wrong?
GDP doesn't measure time wealth. Neither does your bank account. But at the end of life, many report that their relationships and how they spent their time determined their sense of a life well-lived, not their financial accomplishments.
As the economist Tim Jackson writes: "Prosperity isn't about having more and more stuff. It consists in our ability to flourish as human beings."
And human flourishing requires, above all else, time wealth.
The Ultimate Test
On my rescheduled flight home, I found myself thinking about this ultimate test of time wealth:
If you received a terminal diagnosis giving you six months to live, but with the ability to maintain your current energy level until near the end, would you:
- Substantially change how you spend your days, or
- Continue living much as you do now, perhaps with minor adjustments?
If your answer is the first option, it suggests a significant time wealth deficit in your current life. The closer your current time allocation is to how you'd spend your final six months, the greater your time wealth.
Raj, I suspect, would make few changes.
What about you?
Your Time Wealth Journey
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this concept. How time-wealthy do you consider yourself? What practices have helped you protect or increase your time wealth? What's your biggest time wealth challenge?
Remember, in the currency that perhaps matters most, you might be far richer—or poorer—than you realize.
