I’ve always thought of it like the law of conservation of energy. Money is “energy,” your physical and mental health/stamina are, your time is, your knowledge

I’ve always thought of it like the law of conservation of energy. Money is “energy,” your physical and mental health/stamina are, your time is, your knowledge is a store of energy, your connections can be a store of energy, the risk you take can even been seen as an energy in a way. Then it’s just an optimization problem, there are certainly more and less efficient mixes of these energies, but there is likely a minimum amount of energy you’ll have to expend to reach the goal. Unlike in engineering, it’s often a lot harder to quantify the values here, so I suspect honing an eye for it is critical to success in life.