Sahil Bloom is a New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur, investor, and creator dedicated to helping people live fuller, more intentional lives. He is the author of The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life, a book that redefines wealth beyond money to include time, physical, mental, and social well-being.
Sahil is the creator of The Curiosity Chronicle, a biweekly newsletter read by over 800,000 subscribers, where he shares actionable insights on growth, decision-making, and personal development.
He is also the founder and managing partner of SRB Holdings, a personal holding company, and SRB Ventures, an early-stage investment fund focused on accelerating compelling startups.
1) Many of my readers struggle with feeling like time is slipping away. If someone feels trapped in busyness, what’s the lowest-lift action they can take today to start reclaiming their time?
I think the first thing most people need to do is develop an awareness of the different types of activities in their lives—and how those activities impact their energy levels. Most people have very little day-to-day awareness of how the things they say yes to are actually affecting their energy and the outcomes they’re working toward.
What you find, over and over again, is that outcomes follow energy. When you’re working on things or spending time with people who lift you up, things and people that energize you, that you feel a pull of interest toward … those are the things and people that drive the most meaningful, productive outcomes. Those are the 10X or 100X returns that create step-function improvements in your life.
So, the first step—the low-lift one—is what I call my “energy calendar” exercise.
At the end of each day, go back through your calendar and color-code your activities. If something gave you energy—if it lifted you up or sparked interest—mark it green. If it was neutral, mark it yellow. And, if it drained your energy, if you felt depleted during or after, mark it red.
Do that for a week, and you’ll start to see very clear patterns. You’ll get a visual perspective on what’s energizing you and what’s draining you. And once you have that information, you can start making small, steady changes. Maybe you can delegate a red activity. Maybe you can remove it. Or maybe you can tweak it just enough to make it more neutral, or better, make it green.
Look, some red is inevitable. Life has things we can’t avoid. But even a slight adjustment can make a task less draining, and over time, those shifts add up in a big way.
2) You write about the importance of designing your life rather than defaulting to one. For someone who feels they’ve already fallen into a life of obligations, where can they start to reclaim control? And, what do you see as the biggest time traps ambitious people fall into without realizing it?
On the first part of your question, I really think this starts with the tiniest of actions. You’re not going to change your whole life in a day—but if you start slowly changing small parts of your days, that’s how you eventually change your life. That’s why I’m such a huge believer in carving out just 15 minutes, some little pocket of time, where you get to choose joy. And that joy can look like anything. It could be working on a business idea you’ve been kicking around. It could be taking a walk. It could be sitting and breathing. It could even be watching a show that helps you unwind.
Whatever it is, for 10 or 15 minutes, it’s yours. You get to choose joy in that window. And that has a momentum-creating effect. You start to remember that you do have agency and that you’re in control of more than you realize. Just saying no to one thing in order to carve out that time—that act alone is powerful. And once you’ve done it, you start showing up better in all other areas of your life.
Now, as for time traps—one of the biggest ones I see is saying yes to stuff you don’t actually want to do … and that aren’t real obligations. Sure, there are things you have to do. You’ve got to take your kids to school. You’ve got to make them food. Life has non-negotiables. But there’s a whole category of things we say yes to simply because it’s what we’ve always done, or because it fits some idea of the kind of person we think we are.
Like, someone invites you to something two months from now, and in the moment you say yes. And then it shows up on your calendar, and you’re like: “Why the hell did I agree to this?”
That’s the “yes-damn” effect. Learning to say no to those types of commitments—especially the ones you know ‘Future You’ isn’t going to want to deal with is a game-changer. It gives you flexibility. It gives you space. And that space is where real change starts to happen.
3) When The Fun Habit came out, some readers conveyed to me that they possessed little to no control over their time—whether due to work, financial constraints, or both—to apply the tactics I presented to gain time affluence. For someone feeling constrained in this way, what’s a shift that can help them reframe and build wealth (based on how you have defined wealth in your book)?
I think values—personal, family, and cultural—these all layer into how we think about these tradeoffs. Look, life is one big Cornelian dilemma. We constantly have to choose between competing priorities, often knowing there will be some form of regret either way.
For my wife and me, we’ve taken the approach of not wanting to optimize the life out of our life, if you will. We don’t have a nanny. We could afford one, but we’ve made the choice not to. We don’t outsource our cooking either. I actually enjoy cooking for the family—it brings me joy. Sure, I’d have more time if I didn’t cook or do the grocery shopping, but that’s something I want to do.
That said, there are things I don’t care about. I hate doing laundry, so we send our laundry out. And honestly, that’s been a great life upgrade. It’s given us back time and energy in a way that feels meaningful without taking away from what matters to us.
So, I think the key is laying all these pieces out in front of you and then, as you build the means, making intentional tradeoffs. It’s about figuring out what really matters to you. Once you know that—what you want to be saying yes to—it becomes way easier to say no to everything else.
4) In a world where we’re conditioned to chase “more,” how do you define “enough” in a way that actually feels satisfying?
The thing I’d say about “enough” is that humans are just terrible with ranges. Especially when it comes to numbers. Numbers are the thing that disappear and reappear on the horizon. They’re slippery. They shift. They’re prone to what we see in the Michael Norton The Happiness of Millionaires study (i.e., the one that shows people tend to think they need two to three times more than they currently have, no matter what they’re earning). And that pattern just repeats over and over.
We know we’re bad with numbers. I mean, if you had asked me five years ago what “enough” looked like, I would’ve given you a number. But I would’ve had no clue what that number actually meant—what kind of life it afforded me, where I’d be living, what I’d be doing, who I’d be spending time with. None of that.
So, where I’ve landed is this: “Enough” needs to be a life—not a number.
You need to actually understand what that life looks like for you. Where are you living? Who are you surrounded by? What are you thinking about? What are you doing with your time? What are you able to spend money on? What experiences are you creating?
That’s the vision you want. Because a life is way less prone to that irrational disappearing act that numbers pull on us. If it evolves and grows, it’ll do so slowly, consciously, and with much more intention than a moving financial target ever will.
So, I always encourage people to sit down and sketch that out. What does your enough life actually look like? That’s what you’re building toward.
And look, it doesn’t have to be minimalist or austere. For me, I want a second house. Not because I need the asset, but because I want to bring people I love together. I want to create amazing experiences. I want to provide those moments for the people who matter to me.
That’s just my vision of enough. Yours might be more extravagant. It might be simpler. But once you’ve got a clear picture of it, you can start making real moves in that direction.
5) Two of my favorite concepts from the book are the Life Razor (a single guiding principle for decision-making) and the Pyrrhic victory trap (winning battles, but losing the war). How does someone identify their own Life Razor, and can you share an example of how yours has shaped a major decision? And on the flip side, what are the warning signs of a Pyrrhic victory, and how can someone course-correct themselves before it’s too late?
Your Life Razor is really about identifying a single, identity-defining statement that sets up how your ideal self shows up in the world during your current season of life. So mine, currently, to give you an example, is: I will coach my son’s sports teams.
That really has nothing to do with sports, per se. My son is two and a half—he doesn’t even play sports yet. But it has everything to do with how I imagine my ideal self showing up in the world. I picture myself as the type of person who coaches his son’s sports teams. That identity means I prioritize relationships. It means I’m the kind of husband, father, and community member people want to have around.
It also means I’m not going to take some short-term financial action that would jeopardize my character, my integrity, or my morals. And it means I pursue opportunities with all of that in mind. Like, I need to be around enough. I need the time freedom to actually do that.
So, when shiny objects come my way—which they do a lot these days—I have this very clear razor for cutting through the noise. I can ask myself, “What would the type of person who coaches his son’s sports teams do in this situation?” If something’s going to take me away 300 nights a year, it’s probably a no (because I wouldn’t be able to live up to my Life Razor). It really helps simplify things. Having your own version of that is a super useful and productive exercise.
As for Pyrrhic victories—that’s about knowing what you want to avoid. A Pyrrhic victory is a win that comes at such a steep cost to the winner that it might as well be a loss. It’s the battle won, but the war lost.
You see this all the time. There’s someone who society celebrates—we write books about them, say they “won the game.” But they’ve got three ex-wives and four kids who won’t talk to them. And somehow, we still call that success?
My whole mindset shifted when I started asking: Is that even a game I care to win? And for me, the answer was no. That’s a Pyrrhic victory—very clearly. And knowing that helps me avoid that outcome. It’s like the Charlie Munger quote: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”
You’ve got to avoid these bad aims just as much as you should pursue the good ones that are in alignment with your goals.