David Werdiger

Wealth of Time | Power of Pause | Family Office Generalist | Author & Speaker | Former tech geek & entrepreneur

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

@RnaudBertrand This evokes a wonderful quote from Morgan Housel: "The most valuable personal finance asset is not needing to impress anyone."

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

Before caller ID, you picked up the phone and said "Hello" because you didn't know who was calling. There was a ritual of discovery.

Now, when the phone rings, your brain is already jumping ahead — what does this person want? Is something wrong? Depending on who's calling, you may instinctively assume bad news.

Technology was supposed to make communication easier. It has introduced new anxieties instead.

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

https://t.co/j7UlySSXgq

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

What makes a good holiday?

If you’re sitting glued to your phone, does it make a difference if you’re at home or at the beach?

A friend tried 48 hours without technology on her recent holiday and wrote about the experience. The bit about her stress levels is worth reading.

Link to the full piece in the comments

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

We weigh risk very strangely as a society.

We passed emergency legislation to keep teenagers off social media. But we're loosening federal controls on a substance with well-documented neurological risks for developing brains under 21.

What does that tell us about what we're actually trying to protect our kids from?

Full story worth reading: https://t.co/Q324cuP5tj

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

Dollar Shave Club doesn't sell razors. It sells you the removal of a decision.

They took your agency over the repurchase cycle and sold it back to you as a feature. Do nothing, get charged. They call it convenience.

How many daily decisions have you already handed over without noticing?

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

Started my career betting on time decay in options markets. Then built a business selling my own time by the hour. The irony took a while to land.

Your time compounds or it erodes. Most people treat it like a salary. But what most don’t realize is that there’s a better model and time is the real asset.

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

There's a pattern to how platforms rise and fall. Critical mass looks permanent, until a whole generation quietly moves on.

Adults endlessly talk about changing their phone habits. Younger people are actually doing it, voluntarily downgrading to brick phones just to reclaim their attention.

The most countercultural thing you can do right now is slow down. Young people are figuring that out before the rest of us.

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

We've become so overstimulated by technology that we now need technology to help us relax.

A new category of "immersive wellness" is emerging, biometric-responsive lighting, synchronized sound, scent diffusion and it’s all designed to treat the frayed nerves and shrinking attention spans that, by no coincidence, the same technology helped create.

One facility opening in Austin will cover 25,000 square feet and read your body's data in real time to deliver awe and transcendence on demand.

I don't doubt it works. But I keep coming back to what it says about us that we need all of this to achieve something humans have managed since forever, sitting still, breathing, letting the mind settle.

A walk. Silence. A meal without a screen. These things are free, available everywhere, and they've been working for millennia. We've somehow made them feel insufficient.

The spa industry isn't creating this problem. It's just meeting the demand, which is what markets do. The real question is why we've let the conditions for natural restoration erode so completely that a 25,000 square foot immersive bathhouse starts to look like the reasonable option.

The WSJ piece on this is worth a read: https://t.co/sY5iBH79A0

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

I've spoken at family office conferences about succession and governance many times. This was different: I spoke of time as an asset class and our most precious resource, and one that's being quietly eroded.

Just as inflation slowly erodes the value of financial assets, invasive technology is eroding our time and desocialising us. That landed. Not because it's a new idea… everyone in the room knew they had a problem with their phones, but because most people don't know where to start.

A full day off each week feels too distant for many. So there's real value in a spectrum of options, starting small and going as far as someone is willing.

Two moments stood out. One attendee sends his kids to a school on a ranch — no phones, plenty of physical activity. Another asked me a good question: how have I noticed a difference across my six days on the phone?

Honestly, I still use my phone a lot. But knowing I'll take a full break from it every week makes me feel more in control during the other six. The pause changes the week around it.

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

Victoria just expanded its school phone ban to smartwatches and headphones.

Good. But let's not confuse a school setting boundaries with a government substituting for parental judgment.

They're not the same thing and the difference matters.”
https://t.co/ij1Weva5Fi

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

This week, the US President called on Jewish Americans to observe a Sabbath on the weekend of Rededicate 250 (15-17 May), in honour of the country's 250th anniversary.

I'll admit my first reaction was: finally, someone in power is saying what I've been saying for years. But here's what I'd add: This isn't just for Jewish Americans. It's an invitation for anyone.

Most people have never experienced a day without devices, work, or commerce. Nothing in modern life is designed to make it easy. The attention economy runs seven days a week and it doesn't take holidays.

A Sabbath, observed by anyone, for any reason, is an act of reclaiming something that has quietly been taken from you.

If you've never tried it, the weekend of Rededicate 250 is as good as any.

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

"Social media" is the wrong name for the problem.

And because we've named it wrong, we keep solving for the wrong thing.

I call it invasive technology.

Here's why the distinction matters.

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

Cheap dopamine is the Trojan horse of modern misery. And the antidote isn't another app.

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

We all wish we had more time with our families.

So, the question becomes: how to make the most of the time you have with them?
For us, it looks like reserving time to be phone-free.

It’s made such a difference in the quality of time I have with my loved ones.

That’s why I created the Family Time Pact. It’s a simple, shared agreement to be more intentional with time at home.

You simply read it together, decide how you want to hold space for family time, and sign it as a family. It becomes a foundation for making the time together count.

Download my free Family Time Pact here https://t.co/FP8RcHuiH8

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

We used to sort people into neat generational boxes. Boomers. Gen X. Millennials. But that model is breaking.

The same person can behave like Gen Z on TikTok, Gen X at work, and a Boomer when making financial decisions - all in the same day.

So the question isn't which generation your customer belongs to. It's who they are right now, in this context, making this decision.

Behavior changes faster than generations ever could.

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

Kurt Vonnegut said we’re here to “fart around.”

Maybe he meant: be present.

Not all time needs output.
Some of it is for connection, conversation, and simply being.

That’s not wasted time.
That’s life.

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

We’re wired for connection.

Social media promised it—
but gave us quantity over quality.

Now we scroll strangers, chasing quick dopamine hits…
yet still feel disconnected.

Real connection is slow, present, undistracted.

What does it look like in your life? 👇

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

Sorry for what you're currently experiencing across both family and enterprise. Clearly, you are a person with both a strong moral compass and the balls to stand up to a broken system, one case at a time. Your approach to dealing with this is consistent with what you've expressed, so in answer to your question, I agree that it's the "right approach". While people may disagree with your politics, you ought to be able to remain consistent and hold those politics with integrity.

It's worth thinking about how things got this way, and from what you've described, I see a FO that has diverged from the values of its principal. Your nephew's investigation looked at this from the bottom up, but what's really needed here is some top-down work to reconstitute the FO into something that doesn't just serve its purpose, but is values-aligned and trusted at the highest level (governance), from which everything will flow down to the entire team. That will also ensure that the FO is also robust to ensure an episode like this does not occur again.

[David Werdiger @davidwerdiger]

Technology didn’t just make life easier — it made it more isolated.

The question isn’t what we’ve gained…

It’s what we’ve quietly lost.