You are a time billionaire if you have at least 31 years left, and the goal is to spend that time on purpose so you end up rich in both time and money. Life, in this video’s framing, is a strategy game about managing resources, and the resource you cannot buy more of is time. Everybody is credited around 4,000 weeks at birth, which is the equivalent of 77 years.
This article follows the idea from that grid of weeks to a way of planning your decades, a brute-force technique for the years when leaps are needed and a warning about the efficiency trap. It ends with a quick calculation of what a week of your life is worth.
Watch the full video here, or skip to the breakdown below.
Key ideas at a glance
- You have about 4,000 weeks
- Treat time as a currency and invest it early
- Live in decades and be directionally correct
- Brute force and day batching
- Avoid the efficiency trap and be rich in both
1. You have about 4,000 weeks
Picture a grid with all 4,000 weeks laid out. Every row is a year of 52 weeks and every block is a decade of 520 weeks. In your mid 30s, you quickly see how much of it has been used. Seeing it laid out is meant to stir a feeling of not wanting to waste what is left.
Next comes the time billionaire concept. A billion seconds is around 31 years, so if you think you have at least 31 years left, you are a time billionaire, which very few actual billionaires can claim. The claim is that everyone rich would trade half their fortune to be half their current age, and most would trade all of it, because time is the one thing you cannot buy. You can buy time-efficiency and get things done in half the time, but you cannot add more.
If you have 31 years ahead of you, you already own something money cannot buy.
2. Treat time as a currency and invest it early
Think of time as a currency. At birth everyone gets credited with 2.5 billion time-coins, and with every breath life charges an ongoing subscription to keep playing. Most people spend those coins badly: stuck in traffic or watching reruns. Many people say they want to become investors but have no money. The advice here is to invest time instead, because early in life nothing has lower overhead than investing your time, and nothing returns as much when you are so abundant with it.
Abundant time also changes how much risk you can take. When you have more time you have less to lose, so it is easier to take chances on big dreams. You can recover from mistakes with less effect on your overall path, and you get the luxury of trying things. Seeing wealth as time highlights chances for redemption and new beginnings.
The more time you have, the cheaper it is to be wrong.
3. Live in decades and be directionally correct
One idea the video shares is decade-long living: every decade you try a different life. Your 20s are for partying and trying things, working out who you are and what you like. By 30 you should know enough about yourself not to waste your life playing Peter Pan. Your 30s are for going hard on solving money for the rest of your life, since overnight success takes on average 7 to 10 years. In your 40s you might try becoming a painter or whatever your art is, giving it a decade to see how far it goes.
Most people live a single life across all 4,000 weeks, and the video’s warning is not to live the same week 4,000 times and call it a life. It also calls live-today-like-it-is-your-last advice poor, since it pays off only if you really die tomorrow. Over longer windows it underperforms. Be directionally correct, not destination perfect: decide that this chapter is for family or wealth building and set your life up for it.
A bird’s-eye plan for each chapter takes away the anxiety of tomorrow. The video says stress comes from freestyling through life and making it up as you go, which is exhausting for the brain and the soul.
Regret is the bitter taste of time misspent, and wasted time is a life unlived.
4. Brute force and day batching
Different moments call for different things. There are times to leverage resources and know-how, and times when there is no way around effort. Brute force here means the volume of effort delivered consistently, the self-control to quiet the voice telling you to crash on the couch instead of going to the gym.
The hosts share a technique they call day batching, for downturns or when you want to accelerate over the next 6 to 12 months. Back in 2013 and 2014 the hosts’ media business relied on search traffic for most of its revenue, and they owned one of the largest luxury media publishers in the world. When Google changed its algorithm, revenue dropped 50 percent in one day and another 35 percent before the month ended, while the payroll and hard costs stayed. They decided against quitting, because they were still time billionaires with thousands of weeks ahead.
They built an effort-based plan. They woke at 5am, listed the day’s priorities and were working by 6, pushing until around noon, eating and sometimes napping, then returning at 1 or 1:30 until 6 or 7pm. They treated the morning as one full work day and the afternoon as another, cut sports and distractions, and committed to doing it for a full year. In 8 months they recovered the loss and added a couple of million dollars to the company’s valuation. When they rebuilt, they made the company less dependent on other platforms or people.
You do not control what others do, but you do control what you do with your time.
5. Avoid the efficiency trap and be rich in both
Time can be accelerated or slowed depending on how fast you need to extract value from it. The hosts compare it to a candle: the lighter it is, the faster it burns, and the point is not to burn brightest but to burn longer than everyone else. For people who have worked out the money part, the question shifts to how much value they can sustainably take from their remaining years.
A more mature person is less likely to trade time for small pieces of wealth. You say health is your top priority, but with two hours of work left you skip the gym, which is a bad trade. The hosts call the constant push for more, harder, non-stop the efficiency trap: a culture that wants you to sacrifice yourself for economic productivity. With money already in hand, more of it is too expensive and a burden to carry.
The aim is to be rich in both time and money. Homeless people are rich in time alone, and stressed-out surgeons are rich in money alone. The video is also not sold on a retirement spent on a cruise ship with other 69-year-olds. If success is measured by more money, you will always be poor. You win when you feel rich enough, when you travel, when your family is better off because you were smart when you had to be, when your kids hang out with you because you have time, when you are healthy, and when you have done all of this and remain a time billionaire.
Success measured only in money never reaches an end.
What is a week of your life worth?
A calculation closes it out. Work out how much value you produce in a month and divide by 4 to get the value of a week. If you are 30, you probably have around 2,500 weeks left, so multiply your weekly rate by 2,500. At 40 multiply by 2,000, at 50 by 1,500 and at 60 by 1,000.
Seeing the number is the point. Some people are far richer in time than they act, and the video’s last line is to start acting that way.
FAQ
What is a time billionaire?
A billion seconds is around 31 years, so anyone with at least 31 years left is a time billionaire. Very few actual billionaires can claim it.
How many weeks do we get in a life?
Everyone is credited around 4,000 weeks at birth, roughly 77 years. A year is 52 weeks and a decade is 520 weeks.
What is decade-long living?
It means giving each decade a different focus: figuring out who you are in your 20s, solving money in your 30s and trying an art or new path in your 40s. This stops you from living the same week 4,000 times.
What is day batching?
It is a technique for when leaps are needed, where you treat the morning as one full work day and the afternoon as another. The hosts used it for about a year after a drop in revenue, and recovered the loss in 8 months.
What is the efficiency trap?
It is the culture of constant productivity that asks you to sacrifice yourself for economic output. If you already have money, more of it becomes too expensive and a burden to carry.
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