Books · Time & Meaning
Book summary and verdict
The 5 Types of Wealth
Sahil Bloom says money is only one kind of wealth, which is awkward because you spent your health, time, and marriage earning it. Now you can enjoy success the way nature intended, whispering "circle back" from a resort toilet.
Should you read it?
Read it if coworkers call you indispensable and friends have stopped calling because they accepted the evidence. Skip it if you already protect your time, health, and relationships alongside your money. You are not the target audience. You are the control group.
L.Money is only one of five kinds of wealth, which is excellent news for my bank balance and terrible news for everything else I have neglected. The trick is to protect time, relationships, mind, and body before earning money turns them into expenses. I reviewed my portfolio. It is mostly emails and a knee noise.
The ideas
I · Dials
Money buys comfort. It also buys a softer chair for the exact same family argument.
The book counts five ways to be rich: time, relationships, sanity, health, and money. Rough news for anybody who thought one good paycheck covered the wreckage.
Money comes last, which is a beautiful thing to believe when every problem you have accepts Visa.
The basic idea is that a lot of us spend our healthiest years making money, then use that money to repair the body, marriage, and personality we destroyed while making it.
A five-part system for life. At last, the crisis has departments.
You sit in an office for thirty years, eating lunch over a keyboard, and then at sixty-two you pay somebody named Brayden $180 an hour to teach you how to move your hips without making a sound that worries the hospital.
You cannot give work, family, health, friends, and money equal attention every day, because that is five emergencies grabbing the same steering wheel. Some days the baby wins, some days the job wins, and some days lunch is crackers over the sink because lunch lost custody. Pick who gets disappointed.
L.His life was perfectly balanced. Everyone was equally neglected.
The book asks you to score your time, health, money, happiness, and relationships, so you can see exactly where life needs work. Nothing strengthens a marriage like quietly giving it a six.
Your life gets five scores. Nothing improves, but the disappointment now has categories.
II · Time
Money can come back. The afternoon you spent arguing with a stranger about a printer is dead forever.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
III · People
Nothing cuts through networking bullshit faster than mentally assigning funeral seats.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
IV · Capacity
Occasionally let a thought finish before showing it an advertisement.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
V · Enough
If you never decide what enough is, money just hires you.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
What to actually do
Score your time, relationships, mind, body, and money from one to ten. Circle the lowest score.
Smaller: Use one sheet of paper. If you’re choosing fonts, you’re hiding.
L.Messy is fine. This is a diagnosis, not a dashboard.
Write one Life Razor for the next three months. Make it specific and controllable, like, “I do not take work calls during dinner.”
Smaller: “I want people to respect my boundaries” requires everybody else to suddenly become considerate.
L.That’s not a rule. That’s a prayer.
Write down one thing success is not allowed to take from you.
Smaller: Maybe it is family dinner, eight hours of sleep, or one day a week when nobody says “quick call.”
L.A goal tells you what to chase. This rule keeps you from getting it, coming home, and asking your family where you usually sit.
Move one optional work block and give that time to something you keep neglecting.
Smaller: Call your mother, eat with your family, or walk for thirty minutes while your knees still negotiate.
L.Keep the appointment once. Nothing ceremonial. No special notebook. The company will survive. Somehow the logo will remain upright.
Still in the app
- What happened when people tried them
- Bullshit?
- Where readers disagree
- The one thing worth remembering
The rest of this book is in the app.
Skip the Book reads the self-help books so you don't have to: what each one argues, what happened when real people tried it, which claims are exaggerated, and what to do tonight. 108 books and counting, new ones most days.
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