January 17, 2025 | Read Online​

Three Ways to Be a Time Millionaire

Writer Nilanjana Roy coined the phrase “time millionaire” in her 2016 Financial Times column, “How I Became a Time-Millionaire.” Roy highlights a mental shift where she measures wealth not just in financial terms, but also in the amount of free time she has to do the things she loves. She’s not alone, which is why the idea of becoming a “time millionaire” took off.

There are three paths to becoming a time millionaire: extend time, buy back time, and slow down time.

1. Extend Time

For eons, people have sought to cheat death. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, sought the “elixir of life.” Sadly, the mercury pills his alchemists gave him likely led to his death. Alexander the Great, Ponce de León, and many others searched in vain for the fabled fountain of youth. French alchemist Nicolas Flamel and his wife Perenelle purportedly concocted an “elixir of life” granting long life and a “philosopher’s stone” that turned lead to gold. Harry Potter fans will recognize “Flamel” as Professor Dumbledore’s friend and creator of the fictional philosopher’s stone. And that’s the thing, these mystical paths to immortality are just fiction.

That hasn’t stopped anyone from searching for the answer. Today, Ray Kurzweil and other futurists look to medical and biomedical advances to extend their time.

This all seems fanciful or impractical for now. We can however attend to our health. Thanks to advances in healthcare and living standards, we live about twice as long as someone just a century ago.

2. Buy Back Time

For those with the means, you can hire people to do tasks and “buy back” your time. This is hardly a radical idea. It’s Business 101. Still, many entrepreneurs struggle to hire and delegate work. And the ones that do often fill that time with more work instead of leisure. Parkinson’s Law, suggests that work will expand to fill the time you give it. So it takes a conscious effort to fill that time with activities you love and enjoy.

A missed opportunity is to buy back your personal time. When we pay someone to mow our lawn or clean our home, we are a little less likely to fill that time with other chores. That’s the weekend time we get back. My wife Wendy is a master. With the help of the internet and apps like Instacart and Task Rabbit, you can outsource just about anything. She’s found people to help pack for or unpack from a move, shop for groceries, handle meal prep, maintain aquariums…you name it.

If we invest our money, we can all buy back time by outsourcing work.

3. Slow Down Time

Cole Schaffer introduced me to a third path to being a time millionaire in one of his newsletters. He noted that some activities he loved seemed to slow down time. “When we're having loads of fun, time more or less stands still, because we are so lost in whatever it is we're doing, that we aren't thinking about time.” People say time flies when we’re having fun, but it can paradoxically decelerate as well. Think “bullet time” in The Matrix.

What are the activities that allow us to be totally present and engaged in the moment? For Schaffer, time slowed when he read fiction, traveled, exercised, cooked, or went for a walk, to name a few. For me, like Schaffer, I am singularly focused when I’m doing things I passionately enjoy. Even difficult tasks I find fulfilling, like writing these essays, can slow time.

I don’t think we have to choose between the three paths. Time wealth is worth pursuing. While I can’t advise trekking through the Amazon for a mystical fountain, we’d be foolish not to attend to our health. A long healthy life is worth working for. As soon as we are financially able, we can also allocate some of our earnings to buy back time in our personal and professional lives. The last is my favorite–fill the time we have with activities that slow time and deliver joy.

One question to ponder in your thinking time: What’s ONE thing I can do this week to increase my time wealth?

Make an Impact!
Jay Papasan
​Co-author of The ONE Thing & The Millionaire Real Estate Agent

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