This is part four in my series “I Studied Money for 10,000 Hours, Here’s What Actually Matters”
Part one here.
Part two here.
Part three here.
What is actually worth optimizing for financially?
The one-sentence answer I would give is: your experience with money.
Some people think, “I should optimize for how much money I make.”
I don’t think that’s really it. To me, it’s more:
“What’s my experience with money?”
That includes, “What am I waking up in the morning and doing in relation to money?”
“What value am I creating, and from what state of being am I creating that value?”
“The time and the energy that I’m giving to the world in exchange for money. Where is that coming from? And how am I optimizing for that financially?”
When you move to Bitcoin, what happens?
You get more time and energy over time because the money goes up in value over time.
We can get into the reasons for that, but that’s not necessarily the purpose of this video or article. For now, Bitcoin goes up in value over time.
What does that mean?
You get more time and energy.
And what does that mean?
That means you get more time and energy to dedicate yourself freely to the things that your heart and soul truly want to be dedicated to.
Then it becomes, “Okay, what do I actually want to create?”
“What am I passionate about? What do I want to offer to the world? What do I want to see in the world? What do I want to experience?”
“What do I want to experience in general as it relates to money?”
Making money is great.
I am all for making more money.
But from what place are you doing it?
Are you doing it from a place of lack, “Ooh, I need more money so that I can be financially free.” Or, “I need more money so I can be okay?”
“I’m chasing more money because I don’t have enough.”
Or is it, “No, I’ve shifted to a system where I have enough money. There is enough money. My money is going up over time.”
From that place, “What do I want to dedicate myself to? Do I want to maybe sacrifice a little bit of my heart’s true desires to go make a little bit more money so I can stack more Bitcoin?”
Okay, fine. But I’m making the decision about my experience with money from a place of freedom, not from a place of scarcity or survival or lack.
My experience with money is being optimized around what I actually want to experience. There are different layers to that.
I want to build and provide for a family.
That’s part of what I want to optimize for.
I want to optimize for having a certain amount of time every day to spend writing The Bitcoin Thesis so that people can really understand what’s going on with money.
Money is a tool to be able to do that. To be able to shape my experience with money. It can be used in many ways.
The more you understand money — the more time and energy you spend uncovering the truths about money — the more you’re able to consciously use money as a tool of creation, freedom, excitement that ultimately shapes your experience with money, which is shaping decades of your entire life.
Thus, spending time and energy uncovering the truths about money is worth as much as you value the experience of your life.