Baseball is under construction.
New rules are being installed.

Turns out long and boring is bad for business.

 

Over the last 40 years, the length of the average game has crept up from 2:33 to 3:03. Meanwhile, the average number of runs per game is down 15 percent.


 

So, pitchers now have fifteen seconds to pitch without runners on base. With runners on base, pitchers have twenty seconds.

 

Batters are allowed only one timeout per plate appearance. There is a 30-second countdown between hitters.

 

Many pros are not fans of the new rules.
 

Quit micromanaging me.
I don’t need a babysitter.
Leave me alone.
Just let me do my job.

 

But the changes are working! The enforcement of the new rules reduced the length of the average game in Spring Training to 2:39—a savings of 24 minutes per game.

 

If that fails to impress you, let me pose a trivia question: Assuming the length of an average major league game this year was only 20 minutes shorter, how much time would be returned to humanity this year?

 

The answer may surprise you:
35,000 years!

 

That’s right, with 2,430 regular season games and 64.5 million fans in attendance (2022 tally) at games and another 350K people (a conservative number) watching on TV or online, the net savings of time equals 35 millennia.

 

(Someone else can run the math on the negative impact to GDP. I’m not doing it.)

And that’s just this year!

 

Small changes:
Less crotch-adjusting. Fewer annoying pickoff moves to first base. Relievers jog—not walk—from the bullpen to the mound. Hitters re-velcro their batting gloves only 3 times between pitches.

 

Big impact:
35,000 years of free time.

 

How you choose to spend your time impacts other people in non-obvious ways.

In the summer of 2001 I was playing the role of a professional construction manager, but not a good one.

 

I was constantly in reactive mode.
Every day was a series of fire drills.

 

Subcontractors alternated between pushing me around and ignoring me.

 

I bought my own broom to clean up their messes. 
The job was neither on time nor under budget.

 

A new project manager arrived.
His name was Bob Horton.
 

“You open to changing?” he asked.


Yes.
I was dumb, but coachable.
 

“Step one,” he said, “is figuring out where your time currently goes.”
 

Seemed reasonable.
 

“I’m going to ask you to do something you will not want to do,” he warned. “You’ll think it’s unreasonable, annoying, and a waste of time. But if you do it, it could change your life.”
 

He then handed me a sheet of paper with two columns. The left column was already labeled. It started at 5 am. In 15-minute increments, it descended from dawn to dusk, ending at 8 pm.
 

The second column, like my face, was blank.
 

“I told you,” Bob said. “Seems dumb, but it’s not.”
 

“Do it for one week and then we’ll sit down.”
 

It only took three days.
The insights were obvious—even to me.
 

It changed my life.


Fast forward twenty years . . .
 

Last year I created a 15-minute increment template for an an executive coaching client who was working 80-hour weeks.

He was constantly in reactive mode.
Every day was a series of fire drills.

 

“Step one,” I said, “is figuring out where your time currently goes.”

 

A year later, reflecting on the exercise of documenting each 15 minutes of his day over the course of an 80-hour week, he said, “That changed my life.”

 

“I’ve tried to coach my employees to do the same thing,” he said candidly, “but they laughed at me. The ones who laughed hardest need it the most. So I dropped the idea of coaching them.”

 

I don’t want to micromanage them.
They don’t need a babysitter.
Hire good people and them alone, right?
Just let them do their job.

 

Time management—and its frequent monitoring and evaluation—is a leadership decision.

Professionals everywhere extol the virtues of Patrick Lencioni’s The Ideal Team Player:

Humble, hungry, and smart!

 

Then when offered coaching on managing their time—the most valuable non-renewable resource!—these same “team players” flip the script:

Complacent, arrogant and dumb!

 

Get over yourself.
Take the coaching.
Accept the feedback.
 

You can do better.


And really . . . it’s not about you.

It’s about your colleagues, customers, and family.

How you choose to spend your time impacts other people in non-obvious ways.

What does it tell you when executives hire strategic assistants to help them document and improve their time management while their employees farther down the hall from the corner office and further down the org chart resist documenting their own time?

It’s the height of hubris to believe you cannot improve how you spend your time.

Major leaguers don’t have a choice.

Kenley Jansen of the Boston Red Sox was the slowest pitcher in baseball last year, taking more than 30 seconds between pitches.

He’ll adapt.

Jansen will make some small changes:

Less crotch-adjusting. Fewer annoying pickoff moves to first base.
He’ll jog—not walk—from the bullpen to the mound. He’ll force batters to re-velcro their batting gloves only 3 times between pitches.

 

His contribution will represent a small percentage of the 35,000 years returned to baseball- watching humanity.

In construction, more than forty-five percent of projects fail cost and schedule. Nearly every megaproject will fail the same criteria.

 

Am I suggesting that minor changes in the collective time management of the construction industry will save humanity 35 millennia?

 

You know what?
Yeah, maybe I am.

 

How you choose to spend your time impacts other people in non-obvious ways.

 

Respect the clock.

Life is short.
Act accordingly.

 

Now . . . let’s discuss something less controversial: eliminating umpires and letting technology call balls and strikes!