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 Shaun
Pollock is in tears. South Africa in mourning. All over one miscalculated
run according to a little-understood scoring system brought into
existence by two obscure British statisticians.
Rather than get into the whys and hows of following
Messrs Duckworth and Lewis in one-day international cricket, I look
instead at the philosophy in their calculations. And find an odd
parallel with the way one has tended to console ambitious high achievers
who confess that they feel they are not achieving enough.
The d-l method is about ''resources''. Without
going into mathematics, the system says that there are two resources
a team has at the start of a one-day innings: the overs to be faced,
and the number of wickets left.
(For the curious, here's what happens: If a
match is shortened due to rain, the system doesn't just proportionally
alter the target by the overs left, but also uses the 'wickets left'
factor to arrive at a fair number.)
Some of which might be relevant to a way of
thinking about your career and life.
I've spent many long afternoons over iced tea,
talking with people in their 20s and 30s telling me how they're
stuck at work and their doubts about making a big move in their
careers. ''I'd like to do xyz,'' I hear, ''but I'm too old for it.''
I start by asking them to think about the age
at which they'd consider themselves truly 'retired'- when they'd
completely stop working and contributing to the world. At first,
they tend to blurt out "50" or "55". But then
most think a little more and say that they can't think about a time
when they'd be doing absolutely nothing.
I agree. I really don't think too many of us
are going to be doing nothing at any time in our lives, no matter
how appealing that prospect may seem. So I suggest we should accept
that we're going to be productive contributors right into our early
sixties-or whatever our average life expectancy is. (A little more
for women, probably!)
Then I ask, at what age did you become an adult,
or otherwise ready to go out and become an individual in your own
right this world. The answer comes back. "Eighteen."
So, would you agree, I ask, that you have about
45 to 50 years of productive adult life in you?
Yes, I hear back.
So how far have you gone down that path, I
inquire? Most 30-somethings seem surprised to realise that they
still have two-thirds of their innings left to play. And those in
their early twenties come to the startling conclusion that they've
barely started out.
I really believe there's only one asset that
matters in all our lives. It's not money. It's time.
Time isn't money. It's the other way round:
the only 'money' worth treasuring is time.
We're all born with that average of 60 or 70
years in us. And we spend the first 18 or 20 years getting ready
for the remaining 50.
In the absence of any evidence to indicate
that you take your cash and savings accounts with you when you kick
the bucket, I have to assume that all you go with are memories and
experiences.
Which, oddly, is also what you leave behind
for rest of the world. Apart from, perhaps, an offspring or two
to perpetuate the gene pool.
How far down your ''resources'' are you? Many
of us are not fortunate enough to start off down this path unburdened.
Some of us have unavoidable commitments. Perhaps a family debt to
pay off. A kid or two to raise. Parents to support.
So, okay, subtract some time for that. Where
are you now? Are your kids old enough to not need obsessive pampering?
(It makes no difference, you know!)
Do you have a resume, if not a roof over your
head to fall back on? Your parents better off?
So what's holding you back? You have all the
time in the world, you know.
Mahesh Murthy, an angel investor, heads
Passionfund. He earlier ran Channel V and, before that, helped launch
Yahoo! and Amazon at a Valley-based interactive marketing firm.
Reach him at Mahesh@passionfund.com.
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