The New Scoreboard (Comprehensive Wealth)
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
Bloom's central thesis and the subject of the book he was writing: wealth beyond money, or changing the scoreboard. His diagnosis is that money became the sole definition of wealth over the last several hundred years mainly because it's so easily measured — you open Mint or Personal Capital, the number ticks up or down daily, and you feel good or bad accordingly, then stack yourself against everyone else on that single axis. His proposal is to widen the board to include physical health and vitality, mental health and mental fitness, social wealth (the environments you're in and the depth of your relationships), and, most importantly, time wealth: being able to use your time while you can still use it. The practical enemy of the new scoreboard is deferred happiness syndrome.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Notice why money won by default
Bloom's mechanism: money dominates because it's the easiest thing to measure. The daily refresh of a net worth app is a scoreboard you can literally look at, which is why it colonises self-evaluation.
- 2
Add physical health and vitality
The first column beyond money. Bloom's own version is operationalised through daily non-negotiables — movement, cold exposure, time outside.
- 3
Add mental health, fitness and vitality
Bloom splits this into three: working on things that light you up, mental fitness (decision-making, learning, cutting through noise), and mental health proper (mindfulness, spirituality, the bigger questions).
- 4
Add social wealth
The people, the environments and cultures you're in, and the depth of your relationships. Bloom anchors this to the Harvard Study of Adult Development finding on relationship satisfaction at 50 predicting health at 80.
- 5
Add time wealth — and treat it as most important
'You need to think about being time wealthy and being able to actually use our time while we can use it.' Time is the column that cannot be earned back later.
- 6
Discount future time like future money
Bloom's mechanism for why deferral fails: time in the future is worth less than time today. A year-long trip at 55 is not the same asset as a year-long trip at 35.
Watch out 'Once I can afford it' and 'once I've hit this milestone' are how the deferral is smuggled in — and the milestone moves when you reach it.
- 7
Make decisions against the full board
Bloom's own applications: moving across the country to be near ageing parents, and flying to London for a day because the relationship is worth more than the disrupted work cadence.
Pro tip Ask what the decision costs and pays on every column, not just the money one.
In the wild
Bloom describes a 27-year-old friend on the classic winning track — McKinsey, promotions, partner by 30, Indian parents delighted. He wanted to travel for a year instead of doing an MBA, having never travelled much. Every partner told him it was the worst possible decision: he'd miss a year of growth and wouldn't make partner until 32. So he decided not to go. Bloom told him bluntly that it was the dumbest possible reason, because those years never come back. The 'I'll do it at 50' version fails predictably — kids in school, activities to pay for, and a career with its own gravity.
→ A single scoreboard (career progression) overriding time wealth at exactly the age time wealth is worth most.
Bloom cites a Wall Street Journal piece breaking down how people actually spend their time in retirement, and calls it horrifying: roughly four and a half hours a day of watching television on the list. His reading is that it functions as a call to action. If you're grinding today on the theory that a glamorous retirement is waiting — the beach, the piña coladas, the vineyard in Napa — you're kidding yourself, because at 70 you probably won't have the energy or physical health for it and you'll be at home. His conclusion is to enjoy the present rather than an arbitrary financial milestone that moves as soon as you reach it.
→ A concrete argument against trading time wealth now for a retirement that empirically doesn't look like the fantasy.
Common mistakes
Measuring only what's easy to measure
Money wins by default because it has a daily number. Health, relationships and time need deliberate columns or they lose to whatever has a dashboard.
Deferred happiness syndrome
Parking the trip, the move or the time with family behind a financial milestone. Bloom's claim is you mostly never do it, and if you do, you enjoy it less.
Chasing a milestone that moves
The finish line is redefined at every level — a million becomes three becomes five. A scoreboard with one column can never be finished.
From the transcript
“So, wealth beyond money. Changing the scoreboard, right?”
“And I think we need a new scoreboard. I think that in order to live a truly happy and fulfilled existence, we need to expand…”
“Time in the future is worth less than time today. It's just discounted.”
From the episode
9 Systems To Build A Life Of Abundance - Sahil Bloom
Sahil Bloom