Going time-poor in pursuit of financial riches (the trap that most high-earners will regret)

I walked away from my high-paying corporate job because I realized it was making me poor.

Not financially poor, but time-poor, which in my opinion is the absolute worst, because time is infinitely more valuable than money.

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it. Wealth is meaningless if it costs you your life." – Seneca

"Money is nice, but freedom is nicer" – Tim Ferriss

Now I’m living in Europe enjoying a slower and simpler life. I have plenty of time to focus on my health, to build my business, and to do more things that mean a lot to me.

I effectively traded my high salary for more time freedom, for autonomy, for a more fulfilling life.  I’ve bought back my time, and I think you should do the same.

So, if you read this essay to the end then I am convinced you also will re-evaluate your own life. You’ll be motivated to stop giving away your most valuable life asset to the highest bidder in the form of a soul crushing corporate job that requires so much of your time, and you’ll start to find ways to buy back your time as well.

“Memento mori” … Remember that you will die. 

This phrase is popular among philosophers as a reminder of inevitability of death. And with such limited time on earth, it is important that we spend it focusing on what truly matters to us rather than being consumed by trivial things that society tells us to worry about.

If you are in your 30s or 40s, it has probably crossed your mind that you’ve reached the halfway point in life. I hate to say it, but that’s under the best of circumstances, because in actuality there’s no telling if you will prematurely develop a terminal illness or get hit by a bus next week.

We may think of time as being an absolute truth. A second is a second. An hour is an hour. Thus, time must pass equally for all. But seconds, hours, and years are man-made constructs that we use to measure our movement through the temporal dimension that we know as time.

One of Albert Einstein’s most noteworthy contributions to the world of physics was his theory of Special Relativity where he introduces the concept of “time dilation” which basically entails the passage of time being a variable that’s relative to the observer rather than a fixed constant.

In other words. Time passes by differently for different people.

It is known that as people get older, their perception of time speeds up. Life literally goes by faster as you age. This is why as a child the first ten years of your life may have seemed like it took an eternity to pass by, while the most recent ten years probably passed by in the blink of an eye.

The French philosopher, Paul Janet, spoke of what he called the “Proportional Theory of Time Perception” which suggests that your perception of time is a function of your total lived experience, so the longer you’ve been alive, each new unit of time makes up a smaller proportion of your entire life, making time seem to pass faster.

So if you are in your 30s or 40s, you’re now somewhere near the halfway point of your life expectancy from a mathematical standpoint, but it’s likely that in terms of how you perceive the passage of time, you may already be closer to ⅔ of the way through.

Because the 2nd half of your life is most certainly going to pass by much faster than the first half.

“Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.” - Andy Rooney

This brings me to the topic of this essay, which is that if you’re playing by the conventional rules of western capitalist society, then you are spending your best years climbing the corporate hierarchy and creating a life of time-scarcity in pursuit of financial abundance.

Yet, this is the trap that is making people so miserable with their lives, because the real mark of a fulfilling life is having an abundance of time, and the ability to do what you want with it.

So firstly, let’s talk about how terrible we are with time.

The typical high-earning mid-career professional who makes over $200k a year works roughly 60 hours per week.

Our society tells us that this is what a successful life looks like. You’re celebrated for your job title. You’re celebrated for making a salary that can afford you many luxuries in life. You’re celebrated for being such a hard worker who does what it takes to deliver value to your company.

What’s never really talked about is that all of this comes at a cost. In exchange for the prestige and salary, you must pay with your time.

One of my biggest gripes in life right now is that most of my peers are unreachable because they’re so strapped for time. They’re so busy working 60 and 70 hour weeks, then when you include transit time and time getting ready for work, that number actually jumps up to as much as 80-hrs spent every week for work-related purposes.

Everyone is different of course, but for the most part they’re working these long hours and they are stressed out in one way or another.  A lot of people struggle to find time to take care of their health, so their bodies and brains are literally deteriorating right before our eyes. Their mental health is unstable. So many people now are on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. Workplace stress is cited as a contributing factor for many divorces.

And what’s actually crazy about this is that the people that I know who spend so much of their time working jobs that leave them feeling overstressed and burned out, don’t actually need to do it.  If you are a relatively high-income earner (let’s just say six-figures), then you do have the ability to create a life where you can buy back your time.

It just takes being extremely focused and intentional with how you navigate life.

If you are not convinced, and you are content with spending your life fulfilling other people’s dreams then I don’t know what to tell you. Keep doing what you do.

But if you are convinced, and you want to reclaim your time by spending it in the way that you know is best for you (with people you love, doing things that spark your natural curiosities, maintaining your mind and body), then keep reading.

The first thing you need to do is to deprogram your mind. Let go of the idea that you must always be pursuing more.

From the time we’re born, the indoctrination begins. We’re told that we need to ignore our natural curiosities as children and instead focus on making good grades so we can go to a good college.  And we go to a good college so we can land a good, high-paying job, and then climb the ranks up the corporate ladder so we can enjoy a good life.

The signals are everywhere and every single one of us living in this American capitalist society are influenced by this narrative, whether we know it or not.

But understanding that this narrative does indeed exist and then knowing that we can choose to stop following it, is the first step towards reclaiming your time, and your life.

“He who knows he has enough is rich.” – Lao Tzu

“You will never feel okay by way of external accomplishments. Enough comes from the inside. It comes from stepping off the train. From seeing what you already have, what you’ve always had.” ― Ryan Holiday

This is a rather simple step, it just requires a mindset shift and nothing more, but it is incredibly important, because in order to change your relationship with time and money, you must first change your perception of them.

To do this, you need to re-wire your brain at the subconscious level.

I’m not going to go into full details here about my protocol for rewiring the brain, but in short you need to understand your vision for life, your values, your purpose… and from there you can change your environment and put systems in place to re-code your internal operating system to default to valuing time more than money.

It’s super important, but once you do this you’re ready for the next step which is to…

Define your income threshold.

As I mentioned before, you are likely the victim of lifelong programming that told you more is always better. But now that you’ve deprogrammed your mind you know that there is a point at which more is not better and actually can begin to diminish your quality of life.

Studies have shown that beyond $200k/year there are virtually no further improvements in life satisfaction with each additional dollar earned. 

So by doing the calculation of knowing your income threshold, you can then see how much of your time needs to be spent to achieve that number.  But most importantly, you now know how much time you spend working to produce your threshold income.  Any amount of time spent beyond this threshold is time that you should reclaim for yourself.  

From this point onward you have knowledge that enables you to be far more intentional about how you proceed in life. If you don’t do the basics to know this much about yourself, then you’ll always be time poor because you don’t have the means to make a budget.

This is particularly important if you’re in a very high stress job that really takes a toll on your health, your relationships, your mental state, etc.

Determining your income threshold is highly variable from person to person, and I honestly could write multiple essays on this topic alone. But to keep things simple, I’ll just say that you for sure need to do a bit of introspection and really understand the difference between absolute necessities, conveniences, and luxuries.  

But it requires a little more nuance than just breaking expenses down into these three categories because the way you define them is highly contingent on your mindset and your ability to make qualitative assessments of what you truly value in your life.

This is a good segue into the next step which is to… 

Reduce your income threshold.

The $200k/yr I mentioned earlier was the generic threshold. For you it could be more or less.

If you can live the life that you really want, and enjoy all the things that bring you lasting fulfillment with half that amount at $100k/yr, then that is a considerably better situation to be in.

When you lower your living requirement, you also lower your work requirement, and you open yourself up to many more income earning opportunities that allow you to reclaim your time.

Chances are that whatever you think is your minimum amount, you’re probably grossly overestimating that number, so here is where you have to do quite a bit of introspection to distinguish between what actually makes life enjoyable and all of the distractions that are merely sources of instant gratification.

This system of modern society, the matrix if you will, produces a lot of noise that scrambles our signals. We’re exposed to so much advertising that coerces us into believing that we must have certain things to enjoy our preferred quality of life. And it goes beyond marketing.  We also have to deal with societal conventions and norms that also coerce us into thinking that certain expenses are foundational to living a life of abundance.

This part requires that you deeply understand yourself, and the more you understand yourself, the more you’ll realize that you spend a significant portion of your discretionary income on escapisms that bring short-term gratification but no long-term fulfillment.

You want to identify and ruthlessly eliminate these escapisms to the greatest extent possible.

 “Take action. Get out from under all your stuff. Get rid of it. Give away what you don’t need. You were born free—free of stuff, free of burden. But since the first time they measured your tiny body for clothes, people have been foisting stuff upon you. And you’ve been adding links to the pile of chains ever since.” — Ryan Holiday

This is a very personal thing so I can’t tell which things you spend your money on are escapisms, but I can give you a few examples of things that many Americans spend their money on, but would probably be better off if they didn’t.

Every year Americans spend:

• $350B on alcohol and tobacco products

• $300B on non-essential shopping and retail therapy

• $100B on following sports as entertainment

• $77B on luxury goods

• $13B on pornography

It’s debatable as to whether or not these things are the makings of true and lasting life satisfaction, but I would argue that being able to wake up whenever you want without an alarm clock, enjoying slow and peaceful mornings, having time to prioritize your physical and mental health, spending as much quality time as you wish with friends and family… these things are worth far more than the list of escapisms I rattled off above.

In addition to understanding which escapisms are artificially inflating your income threshold (lifestyle inflation is another term for it), it also is very useful to know what activities put you into a state of harmonic living.  If you're not familiar with the concept of harmonic living, it’s the term that I use to describe when life is going really well for you.

It is basically akin to being in a perpetual flow state across the four key domains of abundant living: spirituality, human connection, health and wellness, and purposeful work. And if you know what activities allow for being fully present in these four domains, then you can make much more well-informed decisions about what is actually an escapism and what is something that is a requirement for your life.

I have my own process for unlocking harmonic living. And if you’re interested in learning more about my process then you can schedule a consultation with me, or you can leverage the resources available at The Focus Algorithm. You can use whatever method you’d like so long as you get very clear about what it is that makes your life amazing.

In doing this, you will lower your income threshold, which positions you perfectly for the last step which is to…

Design your lifestyle for maximum time-freedom.

You may not realize it, but you have much more ability to control your time than you think.

“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” – Michael Altshuler

Instead of making decisions with the intent of maximizing your income and your money, you can rearrange the life equation to solve for maximum time. 

There are an infinite number of different ways you can optimize for more time, and it is highly variable based on your individual living situation, so I don’t really want to get into specifics. If you do want help in designing your lifestyle for more time-freedom, then you can schedule a consultation to work directly with me.

Generally what this entails is giving yourself permission to draw the line in terms of making  higher and higher incomes, and instead to follow less traditional career paths that give you more time to live a healthier and more balanced life.

Income becomes a variable that you can adjust up or down, depending on where you’re at in life, to optimize for time freedom.

Let’s say your current job produces double your minimum income threshold for comfortable living.  If you’re optimizing for time, what you absolutely should not do is take the next career opportunity that pays more but also requires longer work hours.

Instead you should look into cutting your hours and freeing up more time for yourself to do other things with your life. 

If you could work part-time at 20 hours a week while making enough to satisfy your income threshold, but now you’re able to spend more time raising your kids rather than farming them off to day-care, then would you consider that to be a more fulfilling life?

If you could put in 60-hour weeks as a contractor for limited periods of time, but with lots of free time to travel and explore the world in between engagements, then would you consider that to be a more fulfilling life?

If you could work full-time for three or four years, then in between work periods you take year-long sabbaticals to volunteer, or to experiment with entrepreneurship, or to pursue other life goals, then would you consider that to be a more fulfilling life?

These are all alternatives that become available to you once you free yourself from the trappings of chasing financial riches at the expense of your time freedom.  When you optimize for maximum time, you’ll start to find more creative ways to build an enjoyable life that is far less stressful, far less anxiety-inducing, far more autonomous, and more fulfilling.

If you do all of these things… you will prevent yourself from going time poor.

Specifically, if you:

• let go of the programming that says you should pursue financial accumulation to no end,

• find your minimal income threshold,

• take steps to reduce that threshold by eliminating escapism,

• design your life to optimize for maximum time-freedom

You will for sure avoid the golden handcuffs that trap so many high-earners into a life of corporate slavery where you must give away so much of your most precious resource to feed the system designed to make other people’s dreams come true but not your own.

You can now spend that free time getting back into shape, or pursuing that business you’ve always wanted to start. You can invest in a hobby that you’re passionate about.  You can actually spend time with your children, or your aging parents, or your friends.

You can enjoy slow mornings without an alarm clock, you can take long walks and spend quiet time appreciating life. You can travel more often. This is what I do now that I’ve ditched the corporate life.

The opportunities to create your ideal life, and life on your own terms truly become endless.

If this sounds good to you, then I want to tell you about my new program called “The Escape Algorithm” which I’m creating specifically to help high-earners who work stressful corporate jobs to finally break out of the golden handcuffs and to start living the life that they want. 

And a foundational aspect of living the life that you want means having more time. So in this program I’m giving you the same framework that I used to leave my corporate job and enjoy a slower, healthier, more connected life here in Portugal.

It’s a cohort model and it’s very selective, so not just anyone can join.  You’ll need to meet the requirements, but if you’re interested then check out this link to learn more.

Aside from that, I have plenty of other free and paid resources at The Focus Algorithm, so check out the resources there if you’re not yet ready for a full program.