On Wealth, Time, and Happiness
"To me, the real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely, who don't even play the game, who rise above it." - Naval Ravikant
Welcome to the first issue of Pillar!
I went into this week thinking that I would be writing on money or economics. But upon reviewing my notes, I stumbled upon something infinitely more important.
Time is money, but time is scarce.
Pillars
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long Term Travel by Rolf Putts
A treatise on adventure, improvisation, learning, and spirituality.
Wealth is found not in what you own, but in how you spend your time.
Most of us spend the best part of our lives earning money to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.
People obsessed with tending their material wealth and social standing are “time-poor”. They couldn’t spare the time to truly experience the splendor of the world.
Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals by Tyler Cowen
Cowen's philosophy: one that places utmost value on sustained economic growth.
[Wealth] includes traditional measures of economic value found in GDP statistics but also includes measures of leisure time, household production, and environmental amenities.
Only inviolable human rights and respect for autonomy and dignity should constrain the quest for higher economic growth.
Human life is complex and offers many different goods, not just one value that trumps others.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgenson
An Angel-Investor-Philosopher shares some practical and uncommon advice.
Seek wealth over money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.
Write code, books, and blogs, or record videos and podcasts. These are forms of leverage that earn while you sleep.
Training yourself to be happy is completely internal. There is no external progress, no external validation. It's a single-player game.
Insights
“Most people think of someone as successful when they win a game, whatever game they play themselves. To me, the real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely, who don't even play the game, who rise above it.” - Navalmanack
1/ The Games We Play
A big chunk of our time is spent playing multi-player games: the school game, the career game, the money game, the status game.
Multi-player games garner the most attention because they are public and have clear outcomes: i.e. more money, better grades, higher-ranked universities, etc.
But these games can foster unhealthy emotions, win or lose. We end up living other people’s lives and playing up to their expectations instead of our own.
2/ Ready Player One
Instead, the most meaningful and important games are single-player games.
Happiness is a single-player game. Others include meditation, reading, learning, and travel (minus the Instagram posts).
Single-player games are skill-based and done for their own sake.
The biggest challenge with embracing these games is “the vague feeling of isolation that comes with it since private sacrifice doesn’t garner much attention in the frenetic world of mass culture”. - Vagabonding
3/ Game Over
“You're going to die one day, and none of this is going to matter.” - Navalmanack
Keeping death in mind when allocating time helps filter the necessary from the unnecessary. So how should we spend our time? Here are some ideas:
Enjoy “The common miracles — the murmur of my friends at evening, the clay fires of smudgy juniper, the coarse, dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time” - Vagabonding
“Do something positive. Project some love. Make someone happy. Laugh a little bit. Appreciate the moment. And do your work.” - Navalmanack
But wait…
What about Money? What about the future?
From a macroeconomic perspective, money helps us improve our everyday happiness, the quality of life, and our shared future.
On the individual level, however, it isn’t the end-all. A way to reconcile the money-time problem is to make money doing what you love. This will feel like play to you but look like work to others. This might take some time to find. But keep looking. It’ll be worth it.
We’re social beings who shouldn’t play single-player games.
Others can give us tips or point us in the right direction. But just as in a game of chess, the performance is all up to us.
When we look up at the sky or slurp some hot ramen, no one else can enjoy it for us. Some things, we can only experience for ourselves. And that’s ok. The real scorecards are internal. So keep playing.
[Bonus] Actionables
Spend more time playing single-player games: meditate, read, take a walk, and take a deep breath.
Add accountability to single-player games to boost retention: use Goodreads to track books or find a meditation buddy to share your insights with.
When it comes to building wealth, be authentic and find leverage. Try to find the problems only you can solve. Highly recommend this thread by Naval.
Build leverage through assets that earn while you sleep: capital, code, or media. The rewards for genuine intellectual curiosity have never been higher.
Remember death: The 5 Things People Regret Most On Their Deathbed are very relevant to the ideas here.
Thanks for reading Pillar! I really enjoyed putting this report together. The toughest part was cutting it down and leaving the essentials.
But as we’ll discover in next week’s edition on writing: brevity and clarity above all else.
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