2 min read

The story of Millions & Billions!

The story of Millions & Billions!

I recently learned about an idea on how to think about the numbers million and billion. And this post is about it.

You might know that 1 billion is nothing but one followed by nine zeros; another way to put it is 1 billion is equal to 1000 million.

And then if you think about million, 1 million is nothing but 1 followed by six zeros. Or a "thousand" thousand.

Simple right!?

Not yet.

Do we really understand what it means to have a billion of something or even a million of something?

I am not just talking about money here and that's exactly the point I am trying to make.

Let's think about time for example.

We have days, hours, minutes seconds. And you may very well know how this goes - every day has 24 hours, each hour has 60 minutes and each minute has 60 seconds. If we do the math we have 86,400 seconds every single day. Some of you might already know this. If you do, very good!

One of the most interesting things happens when we cross-pollinate both these ideas together.

So, the idea worth having in mind is, what does it take to have 1 million seconds and 1 billion seconds?

The crazy answer is 1 million seconds = approx. 11.5 days

And 1 billion seconds = approx. guess what??? 31.69 years (not days, but years!!!)

So, if you have lived for more than 31.69 years, you are already a billionaire in time.

If you can read this text, in all probability, you are already a multi-millionaire in time.

And that's the key idea here.

We are all already either multi-millionaire or multi-billionaire from the context of time. It is our thoughts, choices, and actions that make and define who we are during the period we live in this world and the positive impact we make.

When I learned about this, I thought it was a different perspective to look at time and life. Are you able to relate to this idea? I am curious, where are you in your multi-millionaire or multi-billionaire journey?

Cheers,
Nanda