Sital Ruparelia

In the developed economies of the world, “Time” is now the new currency.  As we get wealthier and more prosperous, the greater importance we place on time as a commodity.

Which is why when it comes to jobs and careers you need to start switching the focus from “what will this role pay?” to “I’m interested in the pay, but how much discretionary time will I get in this role?”

It’s a shift in mindset. A shift that becomes easier the minute you start viewing the money as fuel that provides you with the discretionary time to live your desired lifestyle rather than the end in itself.

Design your ideal lifestyle, cost it and then find the fastest, easiest way to finance this with a career that is in tune with your unique abilities and desired lifestyle.

There are few better proponents of this philosophy than the New York Times best-selling author Tim Ferriss.

Tim published The Four Hour Work Week a year ago with his revolutionary thinking on ‘lifestyle design.’  The key message in the book is that instead of living the “slave, save and retire” lifestyle where you work 25 years, save and look forward to retiring, your focus should be focusing on designing your ideal lifestyle now, creating it while you are still young enough to enjoy it.   And using the advances of the digital world to make that happen.

The guy’s a genius and I would highly recommend the book.  I met Tim briefly whilst he was in London a few weeks back and will talk more about this and his ideas on work, careers and lifestyle design in a future post.

In the meantime, I wanted to refer you to an interesting post on his blog recently about ‘Lifestyle Investing’ in which he recounts a conversation with David Kutoff.

We all know the compounding effect of investing cash/currency.  Well, Kutoff here discusses the compounding effect of time in a similar fashion. It’s an interesting viewpoint. 

Have a read of the post by clicking here.

Let me know what you think in the comments box below….