Our Long Lost Sense of Urgency and the Theory of Relativity

As a business leader, I often catch myself aiming to fit so much in very little time, only to be reminded about how elastic time can be. When I am very busy, I am very productive, and I can find much more time than otherwise. This reflection led me to revisit, in depth, Einstein's Theory of Relativity and its impact on slowing down time: "when an object is moving very fast it experiences time more slowly than when it is at rest".

One can find great analogy in a Squash game: the squash ball is possibly the least bouncy of all balls. When I played the game, and I saw the ball about to bounce on the floor, I would sprint for dear life to hit it before it dies off. Ironically, I often found myself hitting it way too early.

I had ran so fast towards that slow bouncing ball, that as I got there, I actually had all the time in the world to hit it right. Unfortunately, and often, my initial notion of time ends up meddling with my judgement. Not realising that by running so much faster towards that ball, I actually slowed down time. I actually created the time that I needed to make my next shot make all the difference in the world, between winning or losing.

While our response to the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a great opportunity for people to reconnect with their sense of purpose, it has unfortunately messed up many's sense of urgency. When we are asked to bunker up, and wait until the pandemic is over, what we end up doing is decreasing our level of activity. We hence end up reducing our velocity. And with that reduced sense of urgency, we end up wasting a big portion of the time we have left.

How many are fine nowadays to wait 7+ months for delivery when buying, and paying for, furniture? How many think it is normal that projects take 3+ times longer than they used to a mere 2 years ago? How many of us caught ourselves pushing out key transformations or initiatives until Delta has passed, hen Omicron has passed Where have the days gone, that when one ordered a Filet-O-Fish at McDonald's, they got distraught just because they had to wait 3 minutes for it? How did we shift so abruptly from a world that prioritised urgency to an unreasonable extent, to a new one that simply no longer puts any value on time?

How can each of us start ramping up our engines so that one by one, we start slowing down time and creating more opportunities for lasting impact?

The solution, in my opinion, starts with our very own acknowledgement that "sense of urgency" is a key behaviour that is important, but that is lost. It needs to be relearned, and more importantly applied and reinforced at every single opportunity until it becomes habit again. As more of us that start running faster, we go back into the business of advancing humanity. When we advance humanity, we create opportunity for others to advance, and make their own difference in their own world, and eventually that of others.

I diverge to a time, long ago, when as an 8-year-old kid I was trying hard to come to terms with the death of a loved ones. I had struggled with the cruelty of them passing away so early in my life, and with how long they would have to wait till we met again. But then I figured it all out: Time in heaven passes much more slowly than the one on earth. We are super busy down here. Every year on earth must be a minute in heaven. So for them, time would be a breeze. That thought appeased me, and reminded me that my life is nothing but the time that I have left, and that it is best that I take every single opportunity to make it matter. And so should you ...