Time
“What we need,” said Dumbledore slowly, and his light blue eyes moved from Harry to Hermione, “is more time.” (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to guest lecture in Dr. Americus Reed’s Dynamic Marketing class at Wharton. During one of the sessions, one of the students was especially interested in how I managed time while launching and growing a business. I had the experience of managing school with work a few times: high school, college, and grad school.
I didn’t have a great answer then, and I’ve been reflecting more on it. I mentioned Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson’s Law is the idea that work expands to fill the time available. If you only have one month to do something, it takes one month. If you have six months, it takes six months. If you schedule a two-hour meeting, you will likely use the whole two hours. But that’s only part of it.
At an event at the Keller Center at Princeton, my brother Geoff shared his story about building his company at Harvard. Geoff decided not to drop out of school, and as he wrote in Wired Magazine, part of the reason was “how little time a student actually needs to devote to schoolwork.” Some in the audience took that to mean that Harvard must be easier than Princeton – maybe it is! But the reality for most people is that everyone needs to know how to manage time, our most important resource.
It’s much easier to make time for the things that are important to us, but first, we need to decide what is important to us and how much time it will take to do it adequately. I had one of my first lessons in this resource allocation as a senior in high school.
I was accepted into Georgetown early action, so I knew where I was going to college in December. That left about six months of my senior year that honestly didn’t matter much. I was enrolled in many AP courses, as I mentioned in Power of Folding, but one in particular didn’t matter: AP Environmental Science.
The subject matter was interesting enough, but there was no point in the class for me. I didn’t need the credit to graduate. I wasn’t planning on taking the AP exam because Georgetown didn’t accept the credits for that course. It was an easy class, and the way the syllabus was designed only the tests really impacted the grade, and I’m decently good at cramming for tests. I stopped doing the homework and applied that time to other classes or work.
It was a breakthrough. I was learning where it mattered if I excelled and where it didn’t.
At Wharton, Dr. Sonia Marciano shared a similar story. One of her daughters had to make sock puppets for a school project. As they were at the craft store buying supplies late at night, Dr. Marciano asked, “How much is this even worth?” It turns out it would be graded on a check system – either you make one, or you don’t. The stress was not necessary – throw anything together. Use a sharpie to draw eyes on a sock. Done!
This isn’t to say you should always choose the most time-efficient action. I wrote up a 20-page ungraded assignment in one of my Georgetown psychology classes because I found the subject fascinating. (I did not edit or proofread it — that would be a waste of time, it was ungraded!) I made an apple pie for Thanksgiving instead of buying one because I like to bake.
Too often, though, we do things that are not necessary for no additional gain or enjoyment.
Learning to distill what is worthwhile and not takes practice and trial and error. It helps to pause before jumping into the never-ending to-do list and ask “why” something needs to be done with the follow-up: “At what level does it need to be done?” As the saying goes, often “done is better than perfect.”
Lastly, it helps reframe how you think about your time and life. In Dr. Stewart Friedman’s Total Leadership course, we thought deeply about our four domains: work/school, family, community, and self. Though these areas of life sometimes feel at odds with each other, they can complement each other.
Building a business with my brothers meant that my work and family domains overlapped quite a bit. I could be work-Cat and family-Cat at the same time. I also found ways to bring in other things I cared about. For instance, I loved walking with Geoff or Drew on the canal path in New Hope during work. These walking meetings were necessary for my “self” domain as exercise, a connection with family, and productive work discussions. I read emails or study while walking (or running) on a treadmill. In my freshman year, I did almost all of my work from my friend Jessie’s room – we could do work/school stuff together while still spending time as friends.
School and work seem to oppose, but as Geoff said in his article, a student's life isn’t bad. For undergrads, all meals are cooked for you and you have housing. And he realized ways the domains were not in opposition. At Harvard, he had access to ambitious and talented people he could hire as he grew his business.
I found what I learned at school helped me at work, and I could connect things I learned from working to my coursework, making me a stronger student.
Time is a finite, scarce resource. It helps first to figure out what needs to be done and why to manage time best. The time required to take something from 90% to 100% could be exponentially more extensive than the time from 0% to 90%. Recognize the marginal gains in how you spend your time. Next, look for opportunities to integrate the areas of your life. Being aware that these seemingly disparate areas of my life can complement each other helps me manage my time more effectively and joyfully.