Why Energy And Time Are More Valuable Than Money | + How To Optimize Your Energy Levels
Money.
Time.
Energy.
The three most valuable resources in life.
If you mention these three things in conversation, most people will instinctively understand that they are of Vital importance, but few people have given any deep contemplation to these concepts.
That is, few people have given much thought regarding how to truly value them, as well as the appropriate way to allocate them.
The reason why money, time, and energy are so vitally important, is because they are the three fundamental and limited resources in your life and personal empire.
However, I would argue that the vast majority of people in the world, especially the United States, have their priorities completely inverted.
Let me explain.
In the western nations, most people prioritize money over all else. They will take on extremely high stress jobs for modest increases in pay. Sacrificing health and time with loved ones for the sake of career is often seen as a badge of honor.
When you are young, almost everyone sees money as more valuable than time, myself included. In high school I worked a minimum wage job as a park counselor and then later I earned minimum wage tutoring organic chemistry and anatomy in college.
As you get older, astute people learn to value their time more. This is why the expression time is money is quite popular, especially among people older than thirty.
And almost no one ever thinks about energy and health as precious resources as well.
After contemplating this a great deal, I would argue that of the three, money is actually the least valuable. Time is the next most valuable, while energy is the most valuable of the three assets.
In this video, I am going to delve into detail regarding each resource, and explain why this is the case.
Money
No matter how you look at it, it is undeniable that money is very important in our society.
It is a critical resource for the function of civilization.
If you take a moment to stop and think about what money really is, you come to see that it is essentially the most versatile commodity, a store of value that can be used as a means of exchange for any material thing you want in life.
You need money for food, clothes and a roof over your head.
It is essential in that regard, I am not denying that.
So why am I ranking it the lowest of the three?
There are several reasons.
Most importantly, money is the least scarce of the three life resources.
Statistically speaking, you will likely live until just shy of 80. You may live a little longer or less, but essentially, time in life is absolutely finite and scarce. Furthermore, your quality of life in your later decades can vary greatly depending on how you took care of your health during your life.
Money, on the other hand, actually has an infinite supply.
Now if you are working for an hourly salary, even if it is a high six figure salary, it may not seem like it.
But the amount of money in the world is, for all intents and purposes, limitless.
This is because the US dollar was completely divorced from the gold standard in 1971 by president nixon. This means that the people in power can print literally infinite dollars on a whim. While you must slave away and trade your precious time and energy for a very limited number of dollars, the people at the apex of the power hierarchy and their friends can create money out of thin air.
This leads to yet another issue with money: its power is constantly being diluted by inflation.
Most people do not realize that inflation is a hidden tax. Every time the government prints more dollars in order to fund wars in the Middle East or bail out their friends on wall street, your own savings become less valuable and weaker.
The supply of US dollars has increased exponentially over the last few years and sadly does not show any signs of slowing.
On the other hand, wages have largely remained stagnant over the years. Even as an attending physician in a highly specialized interventional field, my salary remained the same over four years, in spite of the rampant monetary expansion policies by the us central bank.
Trading the absolutely finite resources of time and energy for a devaluing dollar has been referred to as “the road to serfdom” by Michael Saylor, the billionaire CEO of MicroStrategy.
So essentially, money can be seen as a resource without a supply cap, and is also a steadily devaluing asset.
Furthermore, I also rank money of lesser value than time and energy, because the earning of money can be scaled.
People who are financially and business savvy will often work hard and go through years of trial and error to find a way of generating wealth that is separate from their time and energy. This is usually in the form of creating a business system that will earn them money in their sleep.
These entrepreneurs put all of this effort into their businesses, because they astutely see that the ability to take back control of their time and energy in the long term is true freedom.
In my parents neighborhood there lives a man who is the owner of a chain of pizza shops. He has one of the nicest houses in the neighborhood and also a plethora of sports cars and boats. How is it that he, as only a high school grad, became as wealthy or perhaps even wealthier than the surgeons and cardiologists in the neighborhood? He created a very simple, scalable business system that was independent of his own time and labor.
Time and energy cannot be scaled in the same way. Everyone has the same twenty four hours in a day, and the human body of course has its limits before you reach exhaustion.
However, for a successful business system, there is really no limit on how much money can be generated.
Furthermore, on a related note, money can also be generated passively through intelligent investment in quality assets, such as dividend stocks and real estate, which is why investing is one of my deep interests as well.
Next, your expenses can also be modulated much more easily than time and energy.
If for some reason you choose to take a lower paying job, you can downsize to a smaller house or apartment, can buy fewer clothes and luxury items, and eat out less, and generally become more minimalistic in your lifestyle.
You really cannot do the same with time and energy.
Lastly, money can be regained if lost.
If for some reason you lose money on a poor investment or the like, you can earn that money back and more if your luck improves and your next business venture is a success.
On the other hand, time lost, especially with close loved ones, is nothing easily regained or made up for. Furthermore, loss of health is very difficult to regain as well, and in some cases can even be impossible to fully regain.
Time
Next, I want to talk about time.
Astute people come to start really valuing their time by the time they reach their thirties and forties, and often will start giving it equal or greater priority compared to money.
I grew up in a very typically frugal Asian household, and in my twenties tried to do everything myself. In many ways I had no choice, since at the time I was a medical student and resident of rather limited means.
However, once I became an attending physician and was earning a considerably higher salary, it made sense to begin to outsource certain tasks. For example, hiring someone to help me clean my condo every couple of months was much more efficient than cleaning my house myself. That is, I could earn far more money in two hours doing epidurals versus the money spent hiring someone to clean my house.
As I said earlier, time is an absolutely finite resource.
Everyone on earth has the same twenty four hours per day. Furthermore, most people will not live much beyond their eighties.
Thus, merely working long and hard hours will only get you so far.
There are only so many hours in a week.
Eighty hours per week is probably the human limit for most people, though I have seen surgical residents push this to even ninety and a hundred hours, though this takes a great toll on health and is not sustainable in the long run, which I will touch on shortly.
This is why businesses hire employees, though it can be a high expense.
For example, let’s say that you run a small business. Even if you are a highly disciplined machine, you can probably work seventy to eighty hours per week, max.
However, if you hire just five employees, you are able to leverage their time to effectively work two hundred hours per week, or 240 hours per week if you count your own labor.
There is no human being on earth who can work even a hundred hours per week in the long term, much less 240 hours per week.
Thus, there is no single human being on earth who can compete with someone who leverages time successfully.
One more thing on this topic; you don’t necessarily need to use employees to start leveraging time.
Nowadays, you can utilize automated systems, like websites and YouTube and even AI.
MicroStrategy founder and CEO Michael Saylor is a great recent example of this.
He was very wealthy but largely unknown before his extravagant Bitcoin purchases.
In the past year, he has accepted nearly every interview and podcast that has reached out to him, and his face is all over the Bitcoin niche on all social media platforms. He has done extensive interviews even with creators who have relatively smaller audiences.
As a self-made billionaire and MIT grad, he is obviously extremely intelligent, and very much understands the value of time, why is he spending so much of his precious time on podcasts and YouTube interviews?
If you look closer, this decision is actually a highly strategic use of his time.
Let’s say he spends an hour talking about Bitcoin with a moderate sized YouTuber or podcaster.
That media is then in cyberspace for all eternity, working twenty-four-seven, independent of Michael Saylor's time.
Even his interviews on smaller channels garner tens of thousands of views over the course of months. His more popular interviews have view counts of greater than half a million.
Thus, one hour of time becomes leveraged into at least tens of thousands of hours of work, serving to promote his personal brand, the MicroStrategy brand, and also the brand of his favorite investment, Bitcoin.
Most people view tools like YouTube and other social media platforms as just a trivial diversion. However, a genius like Michael Saylor views YouTube as an invaluable tool for leveraging his time in ways that would never have been possible even twenty years ago.
I myself actually had a different YouTube channel before this one, focusing on specific medical information and patient education in my own area of expertise, which is pain management. Many of the videos now have tens of thousands of views on them, which means that each video has reached more patients than I was able to physically see in person in a given year. Those videos continue to help people and educate people on topics like SI joint pain, even when I’m doing completely different work. As a quick aside, I actually put that channel on hold, just because the material was a bit too boring, and I’m using this new channel to focus completely on content that I am really passionate about and find very fascinating, even though the topics are more eclectic.
So anyway, in a nutshell, time is more valuable than money, essentially because time is more scarce than money.
But let’s talk about a resource that is even more scarce than time.
A resource that few people talk about or think about.
Energy
Human energy is often overlooked, even by many high achievers.
Furthermore, it is also completely overlooked by modern western medicine.
However, almost every form of traditional medicine recognizes the existence of a all-important life energy that flows through the body of every human being and is essential to vitality.
The ancient Chinese physicians and martial artists referred to this as chi. In the Japanese culture it is referred to as Qi. In the Ayurvedic tradition it is referred to as prana. Ancient Viking warriors called it vril.
It is certainly a less tangible resource to understand and quantify compared to time and money, however, observant people over time will come to an intuitive understanding of what this life energy is and why it is so valuable.
To help you understand life energy, I will give you two examples.
An Olympic athlete in peak physical condition has a tremendously high amount of life energy per day at his command to use.
On the other hand, an alcoholic with multiple chronic illnesses, will have a very low amount of life energy to use per day.
However, even in the case of the Olympic athlete, the amount of energy he has per day is an absolutely finite resource, much like time.
This is why Olympic athletes are so meticulous about planning their workouts down to day and hour, down to the very last detail. Furthermore, their sleep and nutrition are also completely dialed in as well.
They want to make sure to leverage their daily energy in the most efficient way possible - riding the fine line of using their energy most effectively to maximize their training volume, without causing burnout, injury, or overtraining.
In many ways, health and energy are directly connected.
Meaning, the better your health, the more energy you have to use on any given day.
This is why I often told my patients in the past that health is the ultimate investment.
So many of you may be wondering, why am I valuing energy over time?
I will give you three reasons.
First, you can actually expend all of your energy before you run out of hours in a day.
Think of an extremely intense and high stress job. Perhaps you have had to work one of these in the past.
Before the end of even eight hours, you are utterly exhausted.
When you return home, do you have any energy left to do any meaningful activities? Not really. More than likely, by the time you got home, all you were able to do was lounge on the couch and watch TV or surf social media until falling asleep.
On the other hand, if you had a lower stress job that was much less energy intensive, how did you feel when you got home? You still had energy left over to spend quality time with loved ones, to work on your own hobbies, to learn new skills, or perhaps to even work on your own business.
In many ways, the high stress job actually robbed you twice. It cost the time you spent at work, and also cost you the time afterwards by diminishing the quality of your so-called free time.
The second reason is that you need energy and health in order to enjoy your time and money. Really, you need health and energy to take pleasure in any activity you could possibly think of.
Think of the last time you were ill for a few days.
Did you feel like doing anything?
Was any activity even fun?
More than likely, all you wanted to do was lounge under the covers, unable to focus on much except how you felt lousy.
You could have all the money and even time in the world, but without health and energy, it would be meaningless.
The last reason is that health is the hardest to recover if lost.
Most young people who are in the prime of life will often take their health for granted.
I myself only learned this lesson during my experiences in medicine, and learning from my many patients.
You quickly learn the value of health when you repeatedly see people who have sadly lost their health.
Anyone working in the medical field quickly sees that those who have lost their health have also all quality of life. They are unable to make meaningful use of their remaining years, unable to have the experiences they really want.
Furthermore, you also learn that though many chronic diseases can be managed through modern medicine, they are often not fully reversible.
Think of the stereotype of the high stress businessman who has spent years not exercising and eating unhealthy foods, and then suffers a major heart attack at age fifty and then develops the beginnings of heart failure. Even after cardiac rehab, his quality of life will never be the same.
However, there is a positive corollary to this.
And that is, the opposite is also true.
If you put in the effort to take care of your health over the years, you can extend not only the years of your life, but also extend the quality of those years,
Thus, by working on improving your health and energy, you are simultaneously also increasing the time you have in life.
By investing in health, you are simultaneously increasing your number one and number two most valuable resources in life - a truly win win situation, any way you look at it.
So the next logical question becomes, how do you maximize and protect your life energy?
As I alluded to earlier, the most Important thing is to do everything in your power to optimize your health.
The easiest first thing to do is to eliminate any poisons from your system to allow it to function at its best.
This means quitting smoking, alcohol, and recreational drugs of any kind.
This also means minimizing junk food and refined sugars. Poor quality food is often full of chemicals that disrupt the natural endocrine function of the body. Furthermore , these foods are often full of empty calories that lead to weight gain and loss of vitality in the long run.
Instead, you should design a diet full of natural, highly nutrient dense, whole foods. In addition to researching the very deep topic of nutrition, It takes some experimentation on your part to see what foods make you feel best, as every person has unique ancestry and genetics. For example, I know of many people who feel more energized on a ketogenic diet, whereas I personally do not do well on a keto diet.
It is worthwhile to put in the effort to do thorough research on this topic and to do some experimentation, because as I’ve established earlier, how all-Important your health is. Though the optimal balance will vary between individuals, good general advice is to consume a diet full of fresh vegetables and fruit, healthy proteins like fish, grass fed steak, poultry, eggs, as well as a moderate amount of healthy fats and whole grains. You should also stay well hydrated with water, and not sugary drinks like Coca Cola.
It is also important to engage in regular exercise as well. This includes both some form of cardiovascular exercise, as well as strength training a few times per week. I know that everyone is busy, but even two to three quality workouts per week can be more than enough
Next, you should strive to get at least eight hours of high quality sleep per night. I will admit, this is not an easy task in our modern world that is so full of distractions and stimulation, and is something that most people struggle with.
However, it is so important that you do everything you can to maximize your sleep quality and duration, which means building excellent sleep habits. Based on the research of Dr. Matthew walker, sleep may very well be even more vital to health than even nutrition and exercise. This is because chronic poor quality sleep has been linked to a multitude of different health issues, including lower testosterone, heart disease, depression, and anxiety, just to name a few.
A common boomer expression is that sleep is for the weak. It’s a mantra often repeated in modern day hustle culture.
For some time I actually believed this myself.
However, it just doesn’t make any sense in the long run, given the proven long term negative health effects of sleep deprivation.
Furthermore, it rarely is worth it even in the short term.
Think of the last night you only got four or five hours of sleep. If you’re like me, though you may have had a few extra hours of time, the quality of your day suffered. You weren’t as productive and the quality of your work suffered. On the other hand, getting eight or nine hours, you had slightly fewer hours available to you, but you were far more productive with those hours, plus you felt like a million bucks during those hours.
Thus, in spite of what society may tell you, you should never feel guilty about getting the amount of sleep that your own body needs to thrive.
Next, you can also augment this with other holistic health practices, such as meditation, Qi gong, and yoga. The first two have been extremely beneficial in my own case, though I haven’t yet really explored yoga in any meaningful way, though it does seem pretty cool.
Investing in your health every day as I described will not only make you feel better and maximize your energy during each individual day, it will also help you to extend the actual length of your life.
Next, another way to improve energy levels is to enter a field of work that you actually like.
I know that every job has its own difficulties, and no job is all peaches and cream. However, every person has work that they are naturally drawn to and passionate about, and work that they despise.
I’m not sure exactly why this is, but work that you are passionate about is far far less draining than work you dislike.
In my own case, I can spend seven hours video editing straight. Though, my eyes are quite tired afterwards, and I might be tired from physically sitting for so long, I also feel quite satisfied, and also I don’t feel drained in the same way I do from other types of work.
Next, you also want to protect your energy by not wasting it on meaningless BS.
It is difficult for me to understand why so many people in the world devote so much of their energy to petty drama and gossip.
I am telling you, this is an absolute waste of your precious energy.
Sometimes you are forced to work with people who manufacture drama, but even if this is the case, try your best to not let them draw you into it, because you only have so much energy per day, it is worth more than even time, and you have no obligation to waste even an ounce of it on petty BS.
Going along with this, you also should try your best to avoid energy vampires.
I am referring to a very specific type of people.
Of course, I am not referring to friends In need. You should definitely do everything you can to help out your close friends who are good people, as real friends are very precious, and you only have so many truly loyal friends during the course of your lifetime.
What I’m referring to is something different.
I’m sure all of you know people in your life who are always trying to bring others down. They have a problem for every solution. They are always calling every idea you have stupid and are full of discouragement and are always disparaging others. These are energy vampires, and you should really stay away from them as much as possible.
Now of course I do believe that honest feedback is tremendously valuable, and only true friends will give that to you. Fair Critique given in good faith is one of the best gifts you can receive and you should have the humility to value it.
However, what I’m talking about is something very different. I’m referring to people who are constantly trying to bring others down out of envy and spite, and also to boost their own egos. I’m sure most of you have experienced this in your own life.
I’m telling you now, that you owe these people nothing. They will mercilessly drain you of energy and have zero remorse about it. As I emphasized earlier, energy is your most valuable life resource, and you should respect yourself enough to not tolerate these energy vampires robbing you of it, any more than you would tolerate someone trying to steal a hundred bucks out of your pocket.
Now lastly, all of this is interesting and all, but how can you apply this knowledge in your big life decisions?
I will give you two tangible examples before I wrap up the video.
The first example is from an area I am most familiar with - the medical field.
One of the biggest decisions that medical students face as they enter their fourth year, is which specialty to pursue.
Certain surgical specialties are often the most sought after, because they come with the highest prestige as well as the highest pay. However, they also have the most grueling hours, and are also the most energy intensive.
Let’s say that a medical student decides to become a cardiothoracic surgeon, primarily because of the high income and the status it comes with.
I can tell you right now, that this is a big mistake.
Why?
Because of the massive time and energy costs this specialty requires.
It will take five to seven years of residency to train just in general surgery. Then this is followed by a two year fellowship to sub specialize in cardiothoracic surgery. Furthermore, those years are filled with eighty to hundred hour weeks, and are extremely physically demanding, involving hours standing in the OR engaged in intense focus, not to mention the stress of managing patients on the floor.
Immense time and energy demands continue even after training is over.
Sure, the job comes with a big paycheck after the seven to nine years of training is complete, but it is not commensurate with the massive time and energy it costs.
Thus, surgeons who choose the specialty for money are rarely happy with their lives.
Who are the surgeons who are satisfied and happy?
These are the ones whose life passion is to become a surgeon, and could not see themselves doing anything else.
Instead of seeing all the time and energy spent as an exchange for merely money, the energy and time they spend is going towards their life dream, something that is truly priceless. It is a very different scenario, and hence leads to a very different outcome, i.e., more happiness
Let’s use another example, outside of the medical field.
Let’s say, hypothetically, that you have two job offers.
One pays two hundred thousand dollars per year.
The other pays ninety thousand dollars per year. Less than Half as much.
Let’s say both are forty hours per week.
However, here is how they differ.
The first job is very high-stress. It is a relatively unpleasant work environment with a great deal of competition and drama. The stakes are high, and you have to deal with difficult clients every day. Furthermore, you often have to bring work home with you as well.
The second job is low intensity and low stress. The work environment is friendly and easy-going. You rarely have to bring any work back home with you. Furthermore, it involves a lot more work that you actually like doing.
Most people in America would probably choose the first option, and spend the extra income on liabilities to increase status. That is, a bigger house, a nicer car, fancier vacations, etc.
However, I would argue that it is wiser to choose the second option.
The second option would allow you to spend more quality, irreplaceable time with your family. It would also allow you extra time and energy to work out, eat a healthy diet, and get more quality sleep, and work on hobbies that bring you joy. Lastly, and very importantly, it would also allow you the extra energy to study investing, business, and possibly even the time to start a side business. With this self education and experience building a side business - you will have the essential tools to eventually strike out on your own and create your own business, In which you will no longer need to rely on corporate overlords.
Another option of course, would be to choose the higher income job but invest all of the extra income, and leave the job after a few years, when you have enough FU money to start your own business. Of course, this is easier said than done, as high salaries can be like golden handcuffs, as I can very much attest to in my own experience.
I know that this example may be a bit oversimplified, but I wanted to illustrate a potential scenario how appropriately valuing your time and energy might apply to a real life scenario.
Hopefully this video made you think much more deeply about the value of energy and time. I don’t want it to make you anxious about your use of time and energy, my goal was to simply inspire you to cherish and protect these gifts as much as reasonably possible. I myself am still working to improve my allocation of these resources in my own life, and this video was as much a reminder to myself as it is a means for educating others.