The practical domain that develops wealth, power, and abundance. By building this foundation, you free up the time and energy otherwise spent on survival, giving you the freedom to invest in what you want.
Matter Life Area
OVERVIEW
The Matter Life Area builds your wealth, so you gain the power to influence life’s circumstances and create a life of abundance.
Invest in the material aspects and develop your influence through finances, organization, and career to gain freedom over your time and energy.
Neglect your material foundation, and your only goal becomes survival. Your actions will either build abundance or severely restrict your freedom.
ON THIS PAGE
What is the Matter Area?
Matter covers your finances, organization, and career. Every action depends on the material world. The wealthier we are, the greater the freedom to manifest who we are. To experience what we want, and more importantly, to refuse that which we do not want, is to live in abundance.
The greater your organization, the more time and energy you have for everything else. Wealth is not merely hoarding valuable possessions. It is a career that provides value, investments that decouple your effort from your results, and the freedom to manage your own time.
Time and energy are always limited, so risks must be taken. With the right action comes greater power. This influence requires responsibility as both chaos and order can result from action. Living in abundance creates the freedom for every other area of life to develop and grow.
Don’t neglect your power
Without a strong basis in the practical realities of life, you will struggle. Do not underestimate the need for power. When you’re powerless, your creativity cannot manifest, the mind will be anxious, physical health will deteriorate, and relationships will suffer. Being stuck in survival mode uses up all your energy, so nothing remains for the other areas of life.
Disorganization leaks into everything you do. Being human is being in relation to matter. Organizing, investing, and gaining freedom are tasks that cannot be avoided. But many people do not abide by the laws of Matter. When you don’t save, live in chaos, and drift into a career, the result is poverty, either from a lack of things or from possessing the wrong things.
Action precedes effect. The material circumstances you find yourself in are at least partially self-created. One cannot avoid consequences; one can only influence them. If you find yourself powerless, you lack the control to influence circumstances and are at the mercy of other people and nature. To gain freedom, you must increase your power, or you’ll live in poverty.
How to build wealth
Success in life is achieved through compound interest. It takes a decade to become an overnight success. Nothing happens in the beginning, just a little in the middle, but towards the end, the results will come. Wealth, and the accompanying attitudes such as trust, perseverance, and patience, is acquired over decades, not days. Of course, some may strike lucky, but without years of prior effort, one will easily squander their wealth.
You must consistently invest and put in the work. The ability to provide actual value is what creates wealth. Develop a career that pays you in money and knowledge, alongside the skills that are necessary to sustain your efforts over decades. Then invest the fruits of your labor in housing, savings, stocks, and education. Investments will slowly compound into financial freedom.
The ability to control your time is freedom. The choice to live without superfluous comforts is the price you must pay. Not acquiring useless status symbols such as jewelry, expensive vacations, designer brands, and toys you don’t have time for creates space for wealth to accumulate. Combine a simple lifestyle with compound interest, and abundance becomes inevitable.
Five Pillars of wealth
Essential books for wealth
1
The Simple Path to Wealth
— JL Collins ↗
Why low-cost index funds are the best investment strategy.
2
Mastery
— Robert Greene ↗
How to build rare, valuable skills and master a craft.
3
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
— Marie Kondo ↗
Organize your physical space to retain only items that bring joy.
4
Getting Things Done
— David Allen ↗
Essential productivity tools: to-do lists, projects, and calendars.
5
Zero to One
— Peter Thiel ↗
The blueprint for long-term planning and building a unique business.
Common Questions
Matter builds wealth, power, and abundance. This area can either support you or weigh you down.
Compound interest is earning returns on both your initial investment and accumulated past gains. It is slow in the beginning but explosive later on. It requires decades because the growth is exponential and not linear.
Simplicity creates a gap between what you earn and what you spend. It starts when you stop buying status symbols and start investing. Then money will accumulate and buy back time and freedom, rather than useless possessions.
Effort is linear input where the output is strictly bound to the physical hours you work. Leverage is non-linear input where tools, capital, code, media, or delegation magnify your effort to yield asymmetric results.
Combine intense, deliberate practice on core fundamentals with strategic long-term positioning. Relentless repetition of key skills, paired with following natural curiosity, is the recipe for mastery of a craft that translates into a successful career.
Put skin in the game by starting an actual business. Real-world entrepreneurship forces immediate accountability and trial and error that theoretical study can never match. Action shows you what is superfluous and what is worth pursuing.
