The Time Millionaires

Why Having Less Makes Us Richer

Last month, my friend Rowan Winters quit her job as a senior brand manager at a Fortune 500 company to pursue her childhood dream of being an illustrator. When I asked her why she’d leave a position that paid well into six figures, she smiled and said, “I just got promoted to time millionaire.”

Rowan isn’t crazy. She might be the sanest person I know.

You see, we live in a world where we trade time for money, then spend that money trying to buy back the time we lost. It’s like selling your house to buy an identical one next door, except the new house has a slightly fancier doorbell that plays “Despacito.”

Every morning, millions of us wake up to our smartphones (our most loyal yet toxic friends) and begin the daily ritual of trading our most precious resource—time—for something we’re told is even more precious—productivity.

We optimize our morning routines, download time-management apps, and attend seminars on “doing more in less time.” All while ignoring the cosmic joke—we’re trying to save time by spending time learning how to save time.

It’s like trying to get out of debt by taking a course on debt management that costs more than your debt.

But there’s a growing underground movement of people who’ve discovered a radical truth—the way to have more time isn't to manage it better—it's to need less money.

These are the Time Millionaires. People who have opted out of the rat race not by winning it, but by realizing it’s a race they never wanted to run in the first place.