You’re already wealthy.
At least in some of the ways that Sahil Bloom explains in “The 5 Types of Wealth.”
Sahil left a life in finance for life as a writer. He built an audience through Twitter threads and expanded from there, eventually publishing his book.
T-shape can be good for a skillset, but it might not be great for the different types of wealth. Finance provided him a T-shaped life where he was making a lot of money but with sacrifices in other types of wealth.
What are they? Let’s take a look.
1. TIME WEALTH
“Everything I do is for the 17-year old version of myself” — Virgil Abloh
Good news: You’re a billionaire.
A TIME billionaire.
You have at least a billion seconds left in your life. It’s actually something many actual billionaires might not be able to say. Warren Buffet would probably trade some of his money to guarantee more time.
To check if you’re spending your day to day, think about your 10-year-old self and 80-year-old self.
My 10-year-old self might wonder why I stopped playing video games. Maybe it’s something that brought me joy that I could revisit.
My 17-year-old self would be happy to know I’m still making things on the internet.
I imagine my 80-year-old self would happily pay $1000 to take Booster on a walk again.
It makes me feel grateful every time I can take her on a walk.
2. PHYSICAL WEALTH
Of all things, a fit body is one of the ones that money can’t buy.
It certainly helps to afford healthy whole food, access to fitness equipment, and coaching. But you can get in shape without a ton of money.
You also can’t compress this.
And there’s only negative outlier events here. You strength won’t increase ten-fold overnight after some period of consistency.
BUT you can definitely injure yourself and set yourself back weeks or months.
Of all things, a fit body is one of the ones that money can’t buy.
It certainly helps to afford healthy whole food, access to fitness equipment, and coaching.
But you can get in shape without a ton of money.
The bare minimum workout for the day for me?
A walk with Booster.
3. MENTAL
Billionaires can go to space.
And it might be the only place they can go for the other kind of space: mental space.
Often they have multiple businesses.
Or a very large single business that may as well be multiple businesses.
Basically: something’s probably on fire.
Don’t have the same issue but still want a little more mental space?
The biggest bang for your buck might be re-thinking your phone.
It’s a solid slab hammering away at your brain all day.
Just when you think you’ve put it away, you realize it’s liquid metal that can ooze into the nooks and crannies of your attention.
There are plenty of methods to try for reducing screen time.
I like a combination of:
(1) The foyer method that Cal Newport talks about: charging your phone in a different room while at home
and
(2) Using the grayscale filter to make the phone less interesting.
When in doubt: walk with Booster.
4. SOCIAL
Jason McCarthy drove to nearly every state in the early days of GORUCK.
He had a couple thousand GR1s and couldn’t sell any.
But he had his Labrador with him to cheer him up.
He describes that as the minimal community: a human and a dog.
Of course, you’ll probably want some other humans around too.
As Sahil writes:
“You may need food, water, and shelter to survive, but it is human connection that allows you to thrive.”
One action:
Find a recurring activity that you and a friend would do alone anyway and do it together.
Group workouts are a common example.
When in doubt, I can always walk Booster.
Sometimes with a friend!
5. FINANCIAL
Money isn’t everything but not having it is.
One tip that stuck out for me:
Don’t splurge on everything and don’t cheap out on everything.
This doesn’t also mean to be in the middle on everything.
Think more like a barbell.
Splurge on the things you really love in life.
Be frugal with things you don’t care about.
My dumb examples:
I’ll splurge on nice cuts of steak because I enjoy cooking and eating steak.
But I also give myself haircuts because I’m not super particular about my hair and like the time savings.
For many many things, I’ll just buy whatever the “good enough” result is on Amazon.
When in doubt…
Well okay, walking Booster doesn’t do much for financial wealth.
But it’s a nice reminder that money isn’t everything.
WRITING STASH
Warren Buffet’s money got long because he got in the game when he was 10 and stayed in the game the entire time.
How?
Of course, the money is nice.
But he also just enjoyed the process itself.
“I also want to assure you that I have never felt better.
I love running Berkshire, and if enjoying life promotes longevity, Methuselah’s record is in jeopardy.”