Since July 15, I’ve been writing about Sahil Bloom’s The 5 Types of Wealth: Time, Social, Mental, Physical, and Financial. Of the five, Bloom begins with what he considers most foundational—Time Wealth.
He opens with a gut-punching question:
“How many moments do you have remaining with your loved ones?”
His message is: everyone you love will be gone someday. When you allocate time, put your loved ones first, because one day you might wish you had.
Bloom believes that raising children is one of the best ways to reflect on the passage of time. Their presence, growth, and milestones mark time in the most vivid and heart-tugging ways. The laughter, chaos, and tenderness become time-stamped memories—reminders of how fast it all goes.
At the heart of Time Wealth are three pillars: Awareness, Attention, and Control.
1. Awareness
Awareness means realizing how finite time truly is. Without this awareness, we squander it. One simple question puts it into perspective:
Would you trade places with Warren Buffett?
Despite his unimaginable wealth and influence, most people would say no—because Buffett is 94. You may not be rich, but if you’re young, you have what he doesn’t: time. And that, ironically, is what someone like Buffett might trade his fortune for.
Investor Graham Duncan once coined the term “Time Billionaire.” At age 20, with about two billion seconds left if you live to 80, you are richer in time than any billionaire is in dollars.
Still, we often live as if we have unlimited time. As Seneca wrote,
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”
2. Attention
Attention is where time gets spent. It is the true currency of life.
A practical tool here is the Eisenhower Matrix, a framework for organizing tasks based on importance and urgency:
Important and urgent → Do now
Important but not urgent → Focus here
Not important but urgent → Minimize
Not important and not urgent → Eliminate
Most of us live reacting to the urgent, not tending to the important. Yet if you ignore the non-urgent but important—like relationships, health, and learning—they eventually become urgent.
This is why Bloom stresses the idea of “slack”—built-in margins of time and energy. Just like investors want a “margin of safety,” people need buffers to stay sane and resilient. Don’t run at 100% all the time. Leave room for life to surprise you without snapping.
Nassim Taleb echoes this in Antifragile: without slack, life becomes a tightly stretched string—tense, fragile, and always on the brink of breaking.
Another helpful tool is time blocking. At the start of your day, assign fixed time slots for your most important tasks. Guard them like sacred appointments.
3. Control
The third pillar is about taking back control by saying no—to distractions, unnecessary obligations, and energy-draining noise. Don't ever lose control of your time.
If you can’t say no to a task, delegate. If you can’t delegate, use AI. If you must do it yourself, aim for “good enough” and quickly move on.
Time control isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing less—but better.
To help readers anchor all this, Bloom turns to a practice from Ancient Rome:
When a victorious general returned from battle in a golden chariot, the Romans placed a man beside him, whispering:
“Memento Mori—Remember you will die.”
It wasn’t meant to depress but to humble, center, and clarify. Remembering our mortality can help us live with greater purpose, clarity, and urgency.
Final Reflection
In a world obsessed with financial wealth, it's crucial not to forget Time Wealth. As Bloom and Romans remind us, time is the only currency you can never earn back. You can't deposit it in a bank, or pass it to your children. You can only live it, moment by moment.
The challenge isn’t to optimize every second, but to spend it on what truly matters to you.