How to Buy Time

Without extending your life …

Last month I went to an amazing conference. It was full of innovative doctors, scientists, authors and artists discussing topics I love, some of which were preventative medicine, longevity, psychedelics and life purpose.

In a round table discussion, a very accomplished and wealthy man spoke about how he can pretty much buy anything, but time. His insistence on the notion that “you can’t buy time” inspired a this piece, because I believe that it is possible to buy time, and in this piece I’m going to tell you:

🕑 Why it’s possible to buy time

🕑 How I learned to buy time

🕑 How you can buy time, and

🕑 What it has to do with your health (Hint: Read How To Make Medicine Out Of Time)

First we have to reflect on our beliefs around value…

If we believe that money is the only currency of value, I would agree with the statement “you can’t buy time”. But I think that our attention has become more valuable than the dollar. I mean think about it- I know a lot of entrepreneurs that are more interested in engaged followers than customers. The entire influencer economy is funded by our attention. When you consider that our attention is a valuable currency, we can absolutely buy time.

In the last 4 years of my life, I have learned how to buy time and it’s had a profound impact on my quality of life and my health.

In April 2021 I was 42 weeks pregnant. I had stopped working about 4 weeks earlier to ensure that there would be no loose ends if I went into labor ahead of my due date. It was the first time in decades that I just sat around doing nothing- no work, no passion projects, no travel, no practices to improve upon myself. I just sat still, waiting to become a doorway for my child to enter the world. Somewhere in the painful stillness of not doing anything, I stopped orienting my attention toward the birth in my future and I arrived in the present. And when I pressed the brakes hard enough to come to a full stop, I discovered something amazing. I realized that I was not sitting around doing nothing. I was actually growing a human life inside my body. I had been so busy doing other things- my attention so dispersed for so much of my pregnancy that I completely missed the greatest accomplishment of my entire life. I was literally growing and sustaining a human life.

This was the first and arguably the most important lesson my son has taught me. If you do not bring your attention into the present, you will miss your life. Within the present moment there is so much richness and texture. Only in the present can we see the beauty all around us, smell the fragrance of a rose, hear our favorite songs, taste the sweetness of a mango, and feel the embrace another. And when we come into the present with focused attention, time stops.

This is how we buy time. It’s not with cryotherapy or life extension technologies. It’s not by injecting ourselves with botox to preserve our youth or peptides to slow down the aging process. We buy time by slowing down and gathering our attention so we don’t miss the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and sensations that make the most ordinary moments extraordinary.

Slowing down may sound like a simple thing- but in the technological age with a 24 hour news cycle and an inbox that never closes, slowing down is a radical act of rebellion. For some of us it feels impossible.

So here are some of my favorite ways to slow down.