Speech #2 : The Value of Time

What is the purpose of life? It's simple - whatever we do is to get to a better place. If you are tired at the end of the day and go to bed, it's because you know you're going to feel better when you wake up. Hungry and ready to eat? Same deal.

"Time is Money" is attributed to Ben Franklin. But time is what makes up life. So, it's in our interest to get the most out of our time.  

I'll preface my remarks with a disclaimer. I don't prescribe replacing what you are doing with something else. I do recommend questioning your use of time. But, my suggestions are intended to be in the spirit of, "to enjoy time with your friends more, put your phone away, so you can be present." In that spirit, a few practical suggestions you can use. Very quickly :

 1. If you're driving or running errands, give audiobooks a try. Yes, you like reading the real book in your hand. The goal is to get through content, not master it. By going through a lot of content, you'll know what's out there.

2. To improve focus on a hands-on task, consciously relax your tongue. I've found this works. This came out of a book by Anna Wise called "The High Performance Mind." I don't know the logic behind it but it's probably to do with thought needing language and the tongue being involved in expressing the thought through language. It does work. I've used it to beat Duolingo's timed challenges.

3. Give juggling a chance. I got into it because an educational video on fitness said that you'll get more comfortable letting go of something to deal with something else. And I noticed that my stress level did go down once I was able to. Three balls is easy. You can get there in a week with daily practice.

4. To be able to dive into your project at the start of your day, instead of giving into the urge to check your email : Strategic incompletion - use the Zeigarnik effect to your advantage. Your brain remembers unfinished business. So, get to a point at the end of your day where the path to completion is very short and simple, and then head home. The next day, pick up where you left off. You'll be amazed.

Having fired off that salvo of tips, let me climb to the top of the building and survey the time landscape. There's the time you spend at work. There's the time you have to allocate as you see fit. Sometimes, you need to buy time. You've heard that time seems to pass faster when you're having fun - so there's your sense of time.

Let's take the first one - work. How much time should you devote to work? No prescription here, but maybe you know someone to whom the following quote by Larry Bossidy, retired CEO of Honeywell applies : The 80-hour week is actually a weakness. In performance reviews I've had to tell some very smart people that their work habits need to change and that the 80-hour week is actually a major weakness. People like this usually force their direct reports to be in the office with them on weekends and holidays, run them ragged and drain the energy of everyone around them. I'll say, "You need to come in here less, but your performance can't change. It has to be just as good as it is now. Learn to get things done through others, because, if you can't get things done through others, you're ultimately going to sink or burn out." If they promote others on the basis of very long hours worked, which they will, because that is what impresses them, then those people are going to have the same problem.

Speaking of efficiency, Bradley Staats, in his book "Never Stop Learning" mentions the case of the world record holder for knee replacements - Dr. Booth - there are three kinds of surgeons - fast good surgeons, fast bad and slow bad. There are no slow good surgeons. If you're good at something, you're also going to be fast at it.

Enough said about work. Let's talk about time as an asset. How can buy time in a deadline situation such as a hostage negotiation - you have to pay a ransom. Ask calibrated questions - "How am I supposed to do that?", "What are our goals here?", "How can we make this work for both of us?". Avoid closed ended questions that can be answered Yes/No. Remember DDCIA - Don't Disturb the CIA - avoid do, does, can, is, and are. Stick to who, what, where, when and how.  I'm no expert - Chris Voss is. Go read his excellent book - "Never Split the Difference"

That's your time. What if you're a business and you want to buy or steal other peoples' time? If you're a car salesman, think about why you would want to take the keys of the person who came in for a trade-in and keep her waiting while you go talk to the "manager." The longer the person waits, the more time she has invested and the harder it is to walk away. The cognitive bias at play here is "the sunk cost fallacy." How about if you're an airport and have already spent a fortune reducing the time to deliver bags to the carousel from 25 minutes to 8 minutes. To improve the customer experience, should you go bankrupt reducing the time to 4 minutes or find ways to get passengers to spend 4 minutes longer getting to the carousel? What do you think they did?

So, let me recap : use audiobooks to fill up empty time - driving, running errands - you'll have more to contribute at social events; consciously relax your tongue to improve your focus; strategic incompletion - use the Zeigarnik effect to ward off procrastination in the morning and learn juggling to reduce stress. On that last one, I'll throw in the story of Robert Houdin - a famous magician from the 19th century.  He was apprenticed as a watchmaker and went to the bookseller to get a book on clockmaking and came back home to find he had accidentally ended up with a book on performing magic. He was hooked, but realized he lacked a teacher. He admired pianists for being able to multitask but felt musical training would not satisfy his needs adequately. He turned to juggling. He had heard about a corn-cutter who was known for being able to cut corn while simultaneously juggling four balls. He took lessons from him and mastered the four ball act in a month. Wanting to challenge himself, he trained himself to read while juggling four balls and improved his powers of observation to the extent that he could deconstruct the sleight-of-hand acts of other magicians. Writing of it 30 years later, having not juggled at all in the interim, he writes that he attempted the trick just now and was able to read while keeping three balls up. If you've tried it, you can relate to the fact that four balls are much harder than three, which lends credence to his story.

To conclude, aside from the tips, what I did was dwell on some time-related subjects to make you more conscious of your own concept of time. Time is precious, time is money. Time is life. Mr. Toastmaster.