What is the Millionaire Fastlane? It's definitely not the same 9 to 5, the same struggle of facing a computer screen for 8 hours a day, and the same parade of tired faces making their way to work every morning. Something is haunting about imagining that I'll be living the same life ten years from now. It wasn't until I read MJ DeMarco's "Millionaire Fastlane" that I realized this wasn't just a job – it was a prison sentence.
Part 1: The True Cost of Our Time
Let's do some painful math together. As an architectural designer, my salary might not look so bad on paper when compared to the industry – until you realize what we're really trading for it.
- Official work hours: 40 hours/week
- Commute time: 10 hours/week
- Getting ready in the morning: 5 hours/week
- Work-related stress recovery: 5 hours/week
- Total: 60 hours/week
With a salary of about $76,000/year, this isn't $36.50/hour anymore. It's $24.30/hour. That's not counting the emotional toll of missed family dinners, time that could have been spent with friends, overtime (which would put us under the $20/hour mark), and the growing realization that you're not getting anything out of this but a salary.
Part 2: Understanding the Three Lanes
DeMarco's framework hit me hard – instantly exposing the flaws in the way that we've been seeing life. Traditionally, we go to school, get a job, and wait till retirement. Beyond this, he breaks down three financial roadmaps:
Sidewalkers: Living paycheck to paycheck, spending money on luxuries that make them feel rich, only to rack up mountains of credit card debt and financial terror. It's common to live this life. This makes up a large majority of everyone around us. Think about the influencers on social media or even friends that you personally know who don't have much financial responsibility. Behind that image that they project, how many of them are financially unaffected by such lifestyles? It's not sustainable.
Slowlaners: That's where I am now. Good education, decent job, 401(k), and the promise of “freedom” at 65. Save up all that you can now until you have a large enough nest egg to produce passive income. Live on canned beans and toast for 40 years so that you can live like a king when your legs don't work anymore. We trade our now for later. But when we think about it, that freedom isn't even guaranteed. Who's going to give you back your money if the market crashes and you lose it all? Too bad, start building it up again and hope the market doesn't crash again.
Fastlaners: This is the path that he preaches, for those who reject the conventional path. It takes the most effort and it’s the hardest to build up. They understand that wealth isn't just about money – it's about getting your time back. Start a business or way to generate much more cash flow than you could get in a job. You might suffer for a few years from trying to build a business, but aren't you already suffering in the other two lanes when imagining that you would be throwing the golden years of your life away?
Part 3: The 5-to-2 Prison Sentence
Here's what broke me: DeMarco's concept of the 5-to-2 trade. This isn't about the 9 to 5, but something that’s even worse. We sacrifice five precious days for two days of freedom. In architecture, it's often worse – those late nights meeting deadlines or working weekends actually mean it might even be a 6 to 1 trade. In fields like investment banking and the toxic culture that we hear about there, it might even be 7 to 0. You're trapped. When will you have time for yourself?
Think about this: of the 168 hours in a week, we're spending:
- 60 hours on work-related activities
- 56 hours sleeping
- Leaving just 52 hours for everything else
And those 52 hours? One, they're tired hours. They're recovery hours. They're hours after work when you're trying to unwind from the stressful day from just a few hours of Netflix or a night out with your friends. Why do we have to spend the only hours that we have to ourselves recovering from the thing that made us tired in the first place?
Putting it like that, aren't those 52 hours also hours that we're dedicating towards work?
Part 4: Breaking Free Through Creation
Architecture taught me to create spaces – but what if I could create something else instead? What if I took that knowledge and mindset that was drilled into me to create freedom?
How can I create freedom? In the first step of figuring out this journey, I’m starting with a sense of fulfillment. This might not lead to financial freedom or it actually might, but that would just be a bonus. That's why I'm launching WayFeel.
Wayfeeling is a word describing how one navigates the world with one's emotions. Understanding our own emotional states has always been at the forefront of trying to understand who and what I want to become, and I soon realized that this is a problem that many other people face as well. What if I could create an app that could do this for anyone who uses it?
As I explore the journey of creating an app that might start to crack the surface of this wayfeeling concept, I'll be documenting that journey on this blog as well as a YouTube channel for you all! You'll be seeing the part of my life where I'm trying to take steps towards freedom. The jump from working a corporate 9 to 5 to becoming your own business owner is a scary step to take, but I'm excited to take that step with you all!
The channel will share:
- Weekly updates on building a business with no business background
- Real numbers, failures, and victories
- The emotional journey of breaking free
- And a human behind it all, instead of a guru preaching for you to buy their course…
Part 5: The Blueprint for Freedom
This isn't just about making more money – it's about reclaiming our time. Time is the one resource that we can never get more of, why spend it on a path that trades almost all of it for a few years of freedom at the end? The lessons from "Millionaire Fastlane" have shown me that:
- Time is the only non-renewable resource
- Trading hours for dollars is a losing game
- True wealth comes from building systems that scale
- The best time to start is now
That's why WayFeel isn't just another YouTube channel – it's my public commitment to breaking free from the 5-to-2 prison.
The Foundation Is Set
As I write this from my desk at a random cafe after work, I feel something I haven't felt in years: hope. Not the vague hope of retirement or yearly raises, but the hope of imminent change.
We don't have to trade our lives for a paycheck. We can build something different. A life that's genuinely our own.
Join me on WayFeel as I document every step of this journey. Because maybe, just maybe, my blueprint to freedom can help you draw yours.
Your time is worth more than they're paying for it. It's time we started acting like it.
Remember: Your life is the ultimate design project. Make it intentional.