The Real Price Is Time
Spend It Like Your Life Depends On It (Because It Does)
We often chase dollars, pesos, and whatever currency keeps the lights on. But the one currency no one tells you about — the one that's bleeding from your life in real time — is time.
Time is the only thing you truly spend on this earth. When you move around, when you go to work, when you sit with friends, when you scroll your phone — you're spending time. You’re trading life for something else, sometimes without even knowing the cost.
You don’t get refunds. You don’t get extensions. No matter how rich you are, you can’t buy more of it. The average human life spans somewhere around 73 to 79 years. But what does that actually mean? That means you get roughly 4,000 weeks — if you're lucky. Subtract sleep, subtract the decades you spent figuring it all out, subtract the time spent doing things you never actually wanted to do — how much time do you really have left?
Yet we hand over the best hours of our day — 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday — for wages that barely match what that time is truly worth. Employers don’t just take your labor; they take your moments, your mornings, your energy, your light. And they give you just enough in return to keep you coming back.
Most Americans with “good” jobs get two or three weeks of vacation a year — 15 days out of 365 — to finally live. And even then, vacation is often spent coordinating with drivers, arguing with hotel staff, dealing with poor service, and being disappointed by the normal flaws of human interaction. Rest turns into management. Peace becomes logistics. Joy is taxed by dysfunction.
And that’s if you’re one of the lucky ones.
Now let’s really think for a second: why do employers really want you to work from an office?
The pandemic — though traumatic — was a global moment where power shifted. For once, corporations had to succumb to a remote workforce. Not because they wanted to, but because they had no other choice. And for those of us who were fortunate enough to work remotely during that time, something profound was revealed:
You could actually do all your work from home.
You weren’t dealing with traffic. You didn’t have to wake up an hour early just to survive the morning rush. You weren’t pouring coffee into your veins just to stay awake after a brutal commute. You had more energy. You were more focused. You could start earlier, work later, and function better — because your soul wasn’t being taxed by the little cuts of corporate life.
And let’s not forget — the corporations were winning too. No more bloated office leases. No more electricity, heating, or air conditioning bills for massive buildings just to house humans in cubicles under flickering fluorescent lights. The benefits were mutual.
So ask yourself: why are they fighting so hard to bring everyone back?
Why is it so important to them that you be boxed up in one location, breathing in recycled air, performing under surveillance? Why is your physical presence so important when your productivity was proven without it?
I’ll leave you with that question. You can answer it for yourself.
The Goal: Buy Back Your Time
The mission isn’t just money. It’s freedom. It’s ownership of your time. That’s the real wealth.
The moment you no longer have to trade your time for survival is the moment you start living.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that the goal is to climb the corporate ladder — to make more, to manage more, to rise higher. But if you’re still clocking in, giving away your mornings and your magic, then you haven’t made it yet. Your energy is still on loan.
The true flex is freedom of schedule. The ability to wake up and decide what you want to do, not what you have to do. That freedom doesn’t come easy — it requires intentionality, planning, and oftentimes, building something for yourself.
But it also comes from working smarter.
Every mundane task you automate or outsource — from groceries to housework to errands — gives you minutes back. Minutes add up to hours. Hours to days. And suddenly, you find yourself reclaiming life in chunks.
You stop spending your evenings recovering.
You stop spending your weekends catching up.
You stop spending your life waiting.
Instead, you start using that time for your purpose, your peace, your people.
You start building something that works even when you don’t.
You start designing your life instead of reacting to it.
And little by little, you buy your time back — the most valuable asset you’ll ever own.
You Are Not Just a Worker
You weren’t born to grind. You weren’t sent to this earth to wake up early, sit in traffic, answer emails, and then collapse into bed just to do it all again. You weren’t created to count down the years to retirement like some prison sentence.
You are not just a worker. You are a human being with a soul, with gifts, with purpose.
You are allowed to want more.
You are allowed to take your time seriously.
You are allowed to build a life that prioritizes living over just surviving.
Time is the ultimate measure of a life well spent. Don’t let yours slip away in the name of stability that barely sustains you.
Own your mornings. Own your choices. Own your peace.
Because at the end of this journey, no one counts your paychecks.
They count your moments.
They remember your presence.
They feel how you made your time count.