Stop Trading Time for Pennies: How to Master Time Management for Wealth
By Derek — Money isn't complicated. People just make it complicated. ·
Look, I’m writing this from my office in Charlotte while glancing at the telemetry data for the Miami GP. Why? Because Formula 1 is the ultimate lesson in efficiency. If you’re a tenth of a second off in the pit lane, the whole race is gone. In finance, in business, and in your life, the same rules apply.
We talk a lot about money, but people rarely talk about the currency that actually buys it: your time. Most people walk around complaining that they don't have enough money, while simultaneously squandering the only asset they have that’s actually finite. If you think time management is just about color-coding your Google Calendar so you can squeeze in another Zoom call, you’ve already lost the race.
The Efficiency Trap: You Aren’t Busy, You’re Just Leaky
I see it with my coaching clients all the time. They’re ‘busy.’ They’re working 12-hour days, answering emails at midnight, and feeling like they’re crushing it because they’re exhausted. Let me be blunt: being busy is not the same as being effective.
In my five years at Goldman, I saw guys who looked like they were working harder than anyone, but they weren't moving the needle. They were just performing ‘busyness’ to look important. When I left to start my own practice, I realized that the secret to scaling isn't doing more. It’s ruthlessly eliminating the things that don't contribute to your bottom line or your sanity. If your day-to-day operations are a series of leaks—unnecessary meetings, manual tasks that should be automated, or ‘urgent’ requests that aren’t actually important—you’re never going to build real wealth. You’re just trading your life for a paycheck.
Audit Your Hourly Worth
Here’s a simple exercise. Take your total annual income and divide it by 2,000 (roughly the number of working hours in a year). If you make $150,000, your time is worth $75 an hour. Now, look at your week. Are you spending four hours every Monday doing data entry or administrative nonsense that you could hire someone else to do for $20 an hour?
If you are, you’re literally paying money to lose money. You are subsidizing incompetence with your own career growth. Stop doing $20-an-hour work if you want to make $200-an-hour impact. If you’re a founder, your job is to build, sell, and strategize. If you’re an individual, your job is to upskill and invest. Everything else is noise. Identify the noise, and delete it.
The ‘One-Touch’ Rule
I’m a Howard guy—we don't waste time. One of the best habits I picked up, both in the corporate world and running my own shop, is the ‘One-Touch’ rule. When an email, a document, or a decision hits your desk, you process it immediately. You either act on it, delegate it, or delete it.
People create ‘time management’ problems by letting things sit. You open an email, read it, think ‘I’ll handle this later,’ and close it. Then you look at it again three hours later. Then again the next morning. You’ve just spent three times the energy on one simple task. If it takes less than five minutes, do it now. If it takes longer, schedule it or move it to a project manager. Stop letting your inbox become a graveyard for your productivity.
Energy Management > Time Management
Maybe the most important thing I can tell you is this: stop managing time and start managing energy. I’m useless at 4:30 PM on a Friday. I know that. So, I don’t schedule client strategy sessions then. I do my deep work—the hard, analytical stuff that requires a clear head—first thing in the morning when I’m sharpest.
If you try to do complex financial planning or business strategy when your brain is fried, you’re going to make mistakes. And in the world of money, mistakes are expensive. Protect your ‘peak hours’ like they’re the most valuable resource you have. If you work best at 6:00 AM, fine. If you’re a night owl, great. Just stop forcing yourself to work against your own biological clock. You’re not a machine, so stop trying to operate like one.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, money isn't complicated. It’s just math and discipline. But the discipline starts with how you treat your time. If you treat your time like it’s cheap, nobody else is going to value it either.
Stop filling your schedule with stuff that makes you feel ‘productive’ but keeps you broke. Cut the fat. Delegate the small stuff. Focus on the high-leverage activities that actually change your financial trajectory. And for heaven’s sake, make sure you carve out time to actually enjoy the life you’re trying to fund. Winning the race doesn’t mean much if you’re too burnt out to take the victory lap.
How does your current schedule look? Are you actually moving the needle, or are you just spinning your wheels? Shoot me a message—let’s look at your calendar and figure out where you’re leaking value.