Milton Friedman once predicted that as capitalism made societies wealthier, people would naturally trade money for leisure. Karl Marx, by contrast, warned that under capitalism, time would never truly belong to us– that even our hours of “rest” would be conscripted to make us better workers.

Both men were writing more than half a century ago. And here we are, in 2025, surrounded by entrepreneurs who earn more than they ever dreamed, and yet still find themselves chronically time-starved.

The paradox is everywhere: high-income women with seven-figure businesses who head out for a “leisurely lunch,” but then take photos and post about it on social, taking their leisure and ensuring it doubles as commercial productivity. Executives who take off to be at their kid’s soccer game, and then spend the spare moments replying to Slack threads. Lovers who plan a date night, but under their gorgeous dress is a mind in half-presence, wondering about an upcoming project deadline. Or the modern badge of women entrepreneurs– who ensure their business masterminds and live events they attend merge together with “quality time” with their friends, just to make sure their quality connection time is still swimming in the waters of commercial productivity.

Many of these women are cash rich and yet they are poor in the only currency that cannot be reproduced: time.

Time: the great equalizer. Unlike money, which can be leveraged, multiplied, reinvested. But time? Time is fixed.

We can increase the quality of it, our presence in it. But time itself is a non-negotiable.

I know, because I’ve had to wrestle with this myself.

For years, as my business scaled, I imbued my hours with so much meaning: mornings with my husband– sometimes at the gym, sometimes in bed, sometimes just walking our neighborhood with coffee. Years ago I made 3pm the end of my work day as a rule, so I could be there for my boys at the bus stop, or the “Fantastic Mommy Adventure Days” I have with my kids each week: trampoline parks, ice cream shops, glitter-soaked crafts.

It was intentional. Conscious. A refusal to let scaling erase what actually made life worth scaling for.

But as I have expanded my body’s ability to hold leisure and wealth, I have noticed there is one luxury that is perhaps most uncomfortable: the luxury of ample white space in my days.

The other day, my friend Kole texted:
“Pool day? No agenda. Just sunshine.”

She lives downtown – a glass tower that catches the afternoon light. And as I walked toward it, in my bathing suit and linen cover-up, I passed men in suits clutching briefcases, women speed-walking in heels, all mid-call, mid-deadline, mid-hustle.
And there I was, bare-faced, barefoot in spirit, en route to float.

It felt delicious. And if I’m honest– defiant in a way that made me… uncomfortable!
Lunch out? Acceptable.
But an entire afternoon in the middle of a weekday, spent on nothing but pleasure, friendship, sunlight?
It stirred something both uncomfortable and extremely pleasurable in me.

This is the Puritan inheritance Marx understood and Friedman overlooked:
More wealth does not automatically buy leisure–
not in a culture where worth is still confused with output.

If anything, if left unchecked wealth can amplify the neurosis: more revenue, more launches, more pressure to justify your time by producing. What looks like freedom in the bank statement becomes bondage in the body.

For women at the top, there is both money work and deep mind-body work here to truly transcend to the luxury of time.

Scaling your business is a good first step, as it creates leverage within your time. Suddenly you can help dozens or hundreds of clients at once, and on the backend team and systems begin to lighten the load. But you are still in the machine.

The next phase is moving from cashflow to capital, where your investments sever the tie between your time and the growth of your wealth completely. It means your wealth still compounds while you nap, while you travel, if you decide to shut your business down, while you are unproductive in the most human and delicious ways.

That’s when Friedman’s promise finally becomes real. Not just money in accounts, but sovereignty over afternoons. Not just revenue, but luxurious time.

But the final frontier? Feeling the compulsion to work more, to be “more productive” for the world, unwind from your nervous system. Women like to dress the compulsion up in words like being mission-driven, compelled to make a change in the world, but the truth is in her heart.

Does she want to constantly work… or does she actually want more nights around the dinner table, connecting with people she loves, without work coming up in her mind at all?

Does she want to go to the next Mastermind event because she’ll get to see so many of her friends there… or does she actually just want a life where she sees her friends, decoupled from an event focused on commercial production?

The luxuriousness of your time, coupled with overflowing finances and a mind-body that doesn’t feel the constant compulsion to do more, is for most women the measure of success they deeply ache for.

Not the top-line number, but the hours you can surrender without penalty–
the mornings you linger, the games you don’t miss,
the Wednesday spent with nothing to show for it but a sun-drenched laugh with a friend–
all while knowing your wealth hums forward either way.

Wealth can open the door to exquisite optionality.
But no fortune can unteach the body–
steeped in centuries of sermons that tied worth to output–
how to bear the weight of unstructured hours.
How to rest without justification.
How to live in a world that demands proof and offer none.

This is the final frontier.
Not constantly earning more.
But remembering what to do with time
once it is finally– terrifyingly– luxuriously– yours.