Our relationship with time (8/10)

This is 8th in a 10 part series of articles on key insights that stayed with me from the Play to Potential Podcast. In this article we speak about how we relate to time and how it can impact our lives. It is a theme I have been thinking about much more of late.

Clock of the Long Now

Earlier in the year, I had an opportunity to speak with Bill Carr, author of Working Backwards, where he takes us on an insider's tour of the processes, systems and leadership that make Amazon tick. I specifically liked some of the insights around how Amazon has a culture of writing which over time becomes a competitive advantage. During the conversation, I asked him about what are some of the learnable elements from Jeff Bezos for the rest of the mere mortals like us. In that context, he spoke about how Jeff had an ability to think in decades and how that was something that made him distinctive. He spoke about the notion of the Clock of the Long Now which is being funded by Jeff Bezos's Bezos Expeditions, with $42 million, and is on land which Bezos owns in Texas. I am beginning to see the value of the compounding curve and adopting that mindset in what one undertakes.

Persevering at the foothills of the compounding curve

While adopting a compounding mindset is something a lot of people appreciate cognitively, what they (and I) struggle with is in pushing through the early stages of the compounding curve where you put in a lot of effort but there is very little visible progress to be seen. The related question that we often get is "am I climbing the wrong tree?" and "should I cut my losses here?". Whitney Johnson speaks about it here in the context of her book - Disrupt Yourself. In this context, I really liked something that James Clear (Author of Atomic Habits) said in the Podcast. He speaks about the notion of Plateau of Latent Potential. He refers to a quote that hangs in the Locker room of San Antonio Spurs.

"When nothing seems to help, I go back and look at the stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it — but all that had gone before."

- Jacob Riis (Social Reformer)

If I look at my journey over the last few years, I would say that the journey with the Play to Potential Podcast feels a bit like that. For the first 3-4 years, I felt there wasn't much attention being paid to it by the ecosystem. But in the last couple of years, I feel the slight bump in the compounding curve where I feel there is some cumulative trust in the ecosystem and that is showing up in people's comfort in appearing on the podcast or working with me.

Aligning on the timelines of our dreams

While we need to think about the scale on which we operate, this comes even more critical when we join forces with others. This arguably the most pronounced in a Co-Founder relationship. This element goes beyond the preferences of the individuals themselves. It is critical to understand the life context of the various players involved and the nature of the other key individuals in mix (spouses, children, parents et al). How you trade-off on multiple dimensions including cashing out today versus building for the future will depend on the extent of alignment on this front. Very often, we end up focusing on complementarity of skills and capabilities and alignment on values. This aspect of alignment on the time axis is not something that one is deliberate about and this can very quickly lead to hairline cracks in the relationship.

"We were willing to defer gratification for decades, if required." - Nandan Nilekani (on his journey at Infosys)

Resetting the tempo in our metronomes

I learn the guitar on Sundays and one of the things I have realized that for each tune I have a default tempo I gravitate towards. I guess it is a function of my comfort on the fretboard and the familiarity with the notes and scales. However, what I have observed is that the same tune feels very different when I play it at a different tempo on the metronome, whether it is a faster or a slower tempo. As a student of transitions, I am curious about how people move effectively from one context to another. Given that I am a former Management Consultant, one of the transitions I am curious about is how consultants move out into other domains such as Industry roles. In this context, I spoke to Pramath Sinha, a former Director at McKinsey who has played a key role in setting up several educational institutions like ISB and Ashoka University and now is a Co-Founder at Harappa Education. He spoke about how consultants could effectively transition to the world of industry. Once again, he emphasized the notion of the time-frame with which we need to approach these journeys. Without us realizing, we all get used to a certain tempo and when we change contexts (to a start up or to the industry or in investing), we need to be deliberate about resetting our metronome. While we spend a lot of time thinking about the "what" of the job, we rarely spend time on resetting the tempo.

Time - a form of poverty we are often blind to

This is a term I learnt in 2021 in my conversation with Dr Ashley Whillans of Harvard Business School. She says that just like there is a form of poverty we experience when we are short on money, there is a very similar feeling of unhappiness when we are short on time. In her research, she has modelled this and compared the two types of unhappiness and talks about how we can strike some of the trade-offs.

In the conversation, she shares a fascinating insight around this topic. For the sake of simplicity, she divides the world into Taylors (those who prioritize time) and Morgans (those that prioritize Money). The fascinating insight for me was that her research suggested that Taylors ended up making more money than Morgans, which if you think about it, is so counter-intuitive. She also shares a fascinating story of how French eat their food versus how Americans do it and discusses the link between an optimizing mindset (where the emphasis is on spending a lot of energy trying to get the choice of the restaurant and the order right) versus satisficing mindset (where the emphasis is on savouring the moment).

In my work as a Trusted Sounding Board, some of the clients I work with would fall in the bucket of "I have all the money I need and want, now what do I do with my time?" While you might have wealth managers help you manage your money, who is helping you manage your time and energy as you march forward? You might not realise it but how you manage your time might have a greater bearing on your happiness and fulfilment levels once you cross a certain threshold of material outcomes.

If you want to dig in more on this topic, you could visit the Curated Playlist on

Managing time

It is time to think about time!

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This is the 8th note in a series of 10 year ending articles capturing some of the lessons I learnt in 2021 from the Play to Potential Podcast (including reference to some of the insights from the archives). Other articles in this Year ending series include 1) Reflecting on our identities 2) Becoming the Chief Life Officer 3) Developing your Highlights Reel 4) Baby steps towards a habit 5) Dealing with Lifequakes 6) Multiple levels of listening 7) Unlocking more women leaders 9) Driving psychological safety 10) Opportunities for a fresh start

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