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.

1) 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.