How Thinking About Time Can Change the Way You See Money

A Small Moment That Stayed With Me

The other day, I caught myself scrolling without really knowing why.

It wasn’t even enjoyable. Just automatic. A way to fill a gap I hadn’t chosen.

And somehow, in the middle of that, I came across a clip of José Mujica talking about money. He said something simple: that money isn’t what we think it is. That when we buy something, we’re not paying with money, we’re paying with the time we spent earning it.

I paused.

Not because it was new, but because it landed differently.

Money as Time: A Different Way to See Value

If money is time, then everything becomes a trade.

Not in an abstract way, but in a very literal one. That coffee, that subscription, that random purchase, it’s not ten euros. It’s however many minutes or hours of your life it took to get there.

A piece of your life, already spent.

And suddenly, spending feels less reversible.

The Hidden Ways We Spend Our Time

What surprised me wasn’t just how I spend money.

It was how I spend time.

Because if I’m honest, most of my time isn’t spent in big, deliberate decisions. It’s in small, almost invisible habits. Checking my phone. Saying yes when I don’t mean it. Starting things I don’t really care about, just because they might lead to something.

Little leaks.

Individually, they don’t seem like much. But they add up. Quietly.

The Illusion That There Will Be More Time Later

There’s also this underlying belief I’ve been carrying for years.

That I’ll have time later.

That right now is for building, pushing, figuring things out. And that at some point, things will settle, and I’ll be able to enjoy it all.

But “later” is vague.

Time isn’t.

Work, Meaning, and the Tension in Between

The strange thing is that not all time spent earning money feels wrong.

There’s something meaningful about working, building, providing. I don’t question that.

The tension is more subtle.

It’s when the work stops feeling connected to anything real. When it becomes a loop. When the only reason to continue is because you’ve already started.

That’s harder to look at.

What We Trade Without Noticing

And then there are the people.

My partner. My children. The moments that don’t produce anything measurable.

These are the easiest to postpone.

Also the hardest to replace.

A Quiet Shift, Not a Big Change

Since hearing that quote, I haven’t made any radical changes.

I still scroll sometimes. I still get pulled into things that don’t matter as much as I’d like to admit.

But something shifted.

It’s harder now to ignore the cost of where my time goes. Harder to pretend it’s infinite.

And that discomfort stays with me.

Starting Something That Feels True

I think that’s partly why I started New Ground.

Not as a solution. Not as a clear plan.

More like a response.

A way of saying, quietly, that I want to spend more of my time on things that feel true. Things I can stand behind. Even if I don’t fully know where they lead.

A Question That Stays

I’m still figuring it out.

But I keep coming back to the same question.

If time is the only thing that doesn’t come back…

what am I really spending it on?