In games
In games, dying costs you EXP. Sometimes gold and gear too.
Every point of EXP was earned by grinding. Lose it and you have to grind again. All that time, wasted.
So players protect their EXP like their life depends on it.
When you’re sitting on a pile of EXP, you don’t wander into dangerous zones. You take detours around high-level mobs. And when you’re close to leveling up, you play extra careful, because dying now costs the most.
First thing after a grind session: get back to the safe zone and save.
And it’s not just monsters that take your EXP. Some games have PvP systems. Other players ambush you in the wild, kill you, and loot your gold and gear.
To them, you’re just a fat mob. Easier to farm than actual monsters.
Every experienced player knows: grinding matters, but protecting your EXP matters just as much.
In reality
In real life, money is your EXP.
Every dollar was earned by grinding. Say you make $4,000 a month, working 21 days, 8 hours a day. That puts your hourly rate at about $24.
A $5 bubble tea = 12 minutes of your life.
A $2,000 designer bag = 83 hours of your life.
A $40,000 car = 1,667 hours of your life.
But we leave our EXP completely unguarded.
The whole world is trying to take it.
Ads hit you hundreds of times a day, telling you that you’re missing this, lacking that, falling behind if you don’t buy now. Luxury brands spend billions on advertising, hiring celebrities to tell you: buy this, and you’ll be as successful as them. But the celebrity uses the product because they got paid, not because it’s actually good.
To them, you’re just a mob. Your money is the EXP they’re farming. Brands are leveling up off you. Celebrities are leveling up off you.
There’s an even sneakier attack: installment plans.
Normally you’d see the price and hesitate, calculate, walk away. But installments break a price you’d never pay into numbers that feel affordable. The pain disappears, so you buy it. But the total is exactly the same. Plus interest.
Installment plans aren’t helping you. They’re a trap designed to lower your guard and nudge you into buying things you otherwise wouldn’t.
Flash sales, spend-more-save-more deals, holiday promotions. All the same trick: create urgency so you hand over your EXP before you can think straight.
Of course, not everyone is scamming you.
EXP farming has a moral spectrum. If what someone offers genuinely helps you level up faster, that’s a fair trade. A good book, a great course, a useful tool. The EXP you spend might save you hundreds of hours of fumbling in the dark.
But much of the time, the “value” on offer isn’t worth what you’re paying. Sometimes there’s no value at all. Just pretty packaging.
The test is simple: after buying it, will you level up faster?
In games, when someone tries to take your EXP, you run, you hide, you fight back.
In real life, when someone tries to take your money, you hand it over and say thank you.
And every time it gets taken, the time you spent earning it is gone. You saved three months of income, then one impulse purchase wiped it out. Those three months of grinding were for nothing. You have to grind another three months just to get back to where you were.
That’s what wasting time really is. Not laziness, not inefficiency. Your hard-earned EXP keeps getting taken, so you stay in place. Or worse, you go backwards.
So guard your EXP.
Guard it with your life. Just like in a game, where you’d never let anyone take the wealth you spent hours accumulating. Real life is no different.
Don’t let people take your time either, because time is money and money is time. Just like you wouldn’t hand a stranger $24 for no reason, don’t hand them an hour of your life.
The EXP you keep is truly yours. You can spend it on things that actually help you level up. More importantly, you have a safety net. Ready for whatever curveball life throws. Lose your job and you won’t panic about next month’s rent.
Less anxiety means you can focus on grinding.
Money is meant to be spent. So this isn’t about never spending. It’s about asking yourself every time: is this really worth trading this many hours of my life for?
Guard your EXP or you’re wasting time.
Player notes
I used to be terrible with money.
If there was money in my account, I figured I could spend it. New gadget out? Bought. Friends want to try that fancy restaurant? Sure. See something I like? Don’t think too hard. Money comes back, right?
Then I read a book called Your Money or Your Life, and one idea changed everything: every dollar is earned with life energy. You didn’t “make” it. You traded your life for it.
I started doing the math. What’s one hour of my life actually worth? After commuting, prep time, overtime, and the recovery hours from stress, my real hourly rate was way lower than I thought.
Then I looked at my spending differently. That $800 thing isn’t “$800.” It’s dozens of hours of my life. That $150 dinner is an entire day.
Once I did the math, I suddenly didn’t want to buy half the things I used to. Not because I couldn’t afford them. Because they weren’t worth that many hours of my life.
I also started noticing EXP farmers everywhere. Walk into a mall and every sign, every promotion, every “last day!” banner is casting an attack on you. Ads on your phone are even worse. They know what you’ve browsed, what you’ve searched, and they put exactly the thing you’re most likely to spend on right in front of your face.
Now I treat spending like PvP. The other side is a team of the smartest people in the world, backed by billions in research on how to make me open my wallet. One person against an entire system. The odds aren’t great.
So my defense strategy is simple: less browsing, less looking, less exposure. Don’t go to malls, don’t watch ads, don’t click promotional emails. Can’t see it, can’t get attacked.
These days I’m also playing offense in PvP.
Writing books, building apps, growing a community. At the end of the day, I’m also farming other people’s EXP. This book included. You paid for it, and your EXP became mine.
But I believe in honor among thieves. So I publish all my game mindset posts for free on my blog. Anyone who wants to read them doesn’t have to spend a single point of EXP.
When someone who genuinely finds value decides to trade their hard-earned EXP for something I made, that’s the highest compliment. Worth more than any like or comment.
Leveling tips
□ Calculate your real hourly rate. Next time you buy something, convert the price to “how many hours of my life is this”
□ Installment plans aren’t discounts. They’re traps that numb the pain. If paying in full would hurt enough to stop you, then you shouldn’t buy it
□ Reducing exposure is the best defense. Unsubscribe from promo emails, stop browsing shopping sites, turn off unnecessary notifications
□ Remember: brands are leveling up off you. You’re the mob they’re farming. Before every purchase, ask yourself: who’s leveling up here? Me, or them?
□ Don’t just play defense. Find ways to create things others are willing to trade their EXP for. Start playing offense in PvP
