Stop Losing the Race Against Time: How to Build Wealth Without Sacrificing Time

Time is often viewed as our greatest adversary.

In the relentless race against the clock, we constantly strive to cram more tasks into each day, maximize productivity, and keep up with our never ending responsibilities.

Yet, despite our best efforts, time always wins.

And the consequences are real.

In my experience coaching thousands around the world, that’s their number one cause of stress.

But what if I told you, that you don’t need to be in a race AGAINST time. Time can be your friend, if only you would let it.

And so in this article, I want to show you how you can flip the script and make get time to work FOR you, instead of racing against it.

The Toll of the Race Against Time

Work emails, deadlines, meetings, and personal obligations, suck up our time.

Even when we’re not working on it, we lose sleep over them, and eventually burn out trying to manage it all.

We trade family dinners, holidays, and health for fleeting moments of perceived productivity.

Whether you’re an Overworked Employee desperately trying to impress at work, logging long hours, responding to every message within seconds, hoping that staying ahead will mean more opportunities.

Or a Business Owner waking up at the crack of dawn to keep your business afloat, working late into the night trying to handle tasks that never seem to end.

Or a Parent: Torn between work or business commitments and family, always feeling like you’re stealing time from one to give to the other.

I know because I’ve been there.

I spent 20 years in corporate law, heading global teams, attending board meetings across time zones, and spending sleepless nights drafting contracts that only grew in length as time passed.

I sold every waking minute of my life, chasing deadlines that were never-ending.

And for what? No matter how fast or hard I ran, time still slipped away.

Time Doesn’t Have to Be the Enemy

The reality is that trying to race against time is a losing game.

The more you chase it, the more it eludes you.

The secret is to make time work for you, rather than against you.

Instead of selling your hours for dollars, what if you had something that grew more valuable the longer you held it?

What if every minute that ticked by meant your wealth increased, even if you did nothing at all?

1. Investing in Appreciating Assets: Let Inflation Work for You

Inflation is often thought of as a thief that robs your purchasing power.

But the wealthy don’t fight time or inflation, we use it to our advantage.

When you invest in good assets, their value typically rises over time due to inflationary pressures.

For instance, a piece of property purchased today could double or triple in value in 10 years—not because you did anything special, but simply because time passed.

I personally prefer the stock market.  Despite its volatility, it’s returned an average of 7%-10% after inflation.

This is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to let time work for you.

2. Rent: Earning While You Sleep

Another great one is rental income.

Landlords love it when “the rent comes in like clockwork.”

That said, if you’ve ever been a landlord, you know the challenges, which is why these days I far prefer REITs in lieu of rent for my income portfolio.

It’s so much easier to buy and sell than real estate, you don’t need to worry about tenants etc, and the ‘rent’ literally just appears in your bank account ‘like clockwork’!

3. Dividend Stocks

Closely related to REITs in an income investors portfolio are dividend stocks.  The ‘Dividend Kings and Aristocrats’.  

These are companies known for their reliable and increasing dividend payouts.

Their long track record of rewarding their shareholders, make them ideal investments for generating consistent income while capitalizing on the power of time passing.

4. Options and the Power of Theta

Speaking of stocks – in the world of structured assets, time is not just passive – in fact, it is often used as an active component.

New options traders often start with buying options.  And that’s when time works agains you.  But seasoned traders sell options, or structure trades where they are net sellers.  That’s because as a seller of options, “theta”, which is a measure of an option’s time decay works for you instead of against you.

As time passes, options lose value due to the diminishing time left until expiration.

If you’re selling options, this “time decay” works in your favor. The more time passes, the more profit you can potentially make—again, just by doing nothing.

5. Compounding: The Eighth Wonder of the World

Albert Einstein once called compounding the “eighth wonder of the world”, not nuclear energy, but compounding – and this is the guy who discovered nuclear energy!

Imagine earning interest on an investment, and then earning interest on that interest, over and over. Time becomes a multiplier. It turns a modest investment today into a considerable fortune tomorrow.

With compounding, every tick of the clock is a step closer to exponential growth. The best part? You don’t have to be actively managing it. As long as you’re invested, time does the heavy lifting for you.

Stop Selling Your Time, and Make Money Work for You

If you’re trading your time for money, whether through a high-paying job, long hours at the office, or a business that demands every ounce of your energy, you’re fighting a battle you can never win.

Time will eventually wear you down. Hey, it literally has ‘all the time in the world’ – you don’t.

That said, when you start investing in assets that appreciate over time, generating passive income streams, or leveraging structures like options, you shift the balance. Suddenly, time is not your enemy; it’s your most valuable partner.

This is the mindset shift I made when I left corporate law.

I decided to stop selling my time and started investing in opportunities that compounded and generated returns whether I was working or not.

It didn’t happen overnight, but when I began making time work for me instead of against me, the stress of constantly racing against the clock disappeared.

You don’t have to play by the rules of trading hours for dollars.

Choose assets and strategies that harness time as a tool for wealth creation. Then, watch as the script flips: time starts to work for you, not against you.

The question isn’t whether you’ll lose the race against time—you will. The real question is: Will you keep racing? Or will you make time your greatest ally?