The resource we all waste most
This occurred during a recent trip to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, UK. Walking around the observatory, the most significant learning was not about stars and planets but time.
We are all scared of wasting resources. Yet there is one resource, maybe more valuable than any other, that we waste more than others, yet few people seem to care about and often throw it away. This occurred during a recent trip to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, UK. Walking around the observatory, the most significant learning was not about stars and planets but time.
Time and Place
The significant lesson that early sailors discovered was that if you want to know where you are, you need a reliable clock. This struck me as strange, but accurate time is essential for determining position. If you know the time, you can determine your longitude. It was in the 1700s that John Harrison invented the Marine Chronometer, a long-sought timekeeping device to solve the problem of establishing one’s East/West position (longitude) at sea. This is important because if your clock is off by one second, you could be off by nearly a third of a mile. Not much on any day, but trips took months, and each third of a mile can add to missing a continent.
What is so striking about looking at John Harrison’s timepieces and all the other clocks at Greenwich is how much money and effort was spent getting to know what time it was. Knowing the time gave you power. It was a vital resource that was hard to understand and harder still to keep.
Time was a valuable resource.
A waste of time
Today we all know the time - on our watches, PCs, and phones. Time has become easy to know and cheap to track. That abundance of knowledge seems to reduce the value of time. It feels like time is cheap and often disposable.
Maybe the most extreme example of this is punctuality. Think about how complex being punctual was for most of history. It was hard to do and very expensive. Agreeing to meet someone somewhere may have required traveling, which could be costly and dangerous. Being on time may have been a matter of life or death. Shoot forward a few centuries, and, in the extreme, we have people today who believe punctuality is part of a white supremacy culture. I do not know if they are right or wrong, but it shows how little we value time. Yet, time is often why we succeed or fail in life.
A race against time
In Robert Greene’s ‘The 48 Laws of Power’, he outlined three-time categories. His Law 35 is called ‘Mastering the Art of Timing’ and outlines the importance of understanding how time works for you or against you.
First was Long Time which can be measured in decades, not years. When managing for a long time, you take deliberate, strategic stances and let them play out. Long Time often needs significant resources to execute, but the overwhelming force is optional if your strategy is sound.
We have all watched the end of a sporting event where the action slows down, and the winning team starts to ‘run out the clock.’ Any aggressive play can open you up to the risk of error that may open the opportunity for the opposition to make a winning play. The added advantage of this approach is the pressure you place on the other side, which may mean they make an error you can exploit. In this example, we are using time as an offensive weapon. Green identifies this as Forced Time.
The final category is End Time. A plan must be executed with speed and force, and when you find the moment, you must not hesitate. You may be waiting patiently for the right moment to act, putting your competitors off their form by messing with their timing—but it won't mean a thing unless you know how to finish. Speed can paralyze your opponent, cover up any mistakes you might make, and impress people with your aura of authority and finality.
It's all about time
QUOTE: "I've never lost a game. I just ran out of time." Michael Jordan
Most of us would succeed at most things if we just had enough time.
Maybe we should spend more effort valuing our time and working out how to use it more effectively. Almost all other resources, including money and people, are more readily available than time. There are more people and more money; there is no more time. Our daily work lives are a race against time. Those who know this succeed more than those who don’t.
If you don’t value time, then you may tend to blame it for your failures, but then again, that’s just a story you are telling yourself.