The Year Which Left Me on Learning How to Dance With Time.!

It was Monday morning and I was going through my typical rush-hour machinations when, finally, the antique pocket watch given to me as a child by my grandfather stopped ticking. Mid-March 2024, I was piling it all into every moment like everyone else. The timepiece — a family heirloom, an antique, that had been my grandfather's and which had run perfectly for over eighty years before stopping — now rested quietly in the palm of my hand, golden roman numerals parallels vibrant with the rays of early spring. Little did I know that this would metaphorically carry me through the entire rest of my year.

My grandfather had got it from his dad before he passed away at 95 a few months earlier. When I last spoke to him, it was as though he were being curious with me. "Ain't time something you should chase darling? It is meant for dancing with." At the time, doped up on morphine, I nodded — my release at that moment accurate and poetic, though likely nonsense.

Time was the greatest luxury in the fast-paced tech start-up I worked for. We could measure it, quantify it, whittle it down to its optimal value — but always seemed never to have enough of it. Our team meetings were only allowed to last for so long, lunch breaks given the minute glasses treatment, project deadlines stark looming and barely visible thunderheads out on the horizon. I had become so conditioned to this way of being that I wore my perpetual busyness as a badge of honor.

The watch repair place was located in a part of the city not typically frequenting as The watchmaker, Mr. Chen examined the watch as if it were scripture–taking turns to apprise sections of clockwork with a low whisper of about an inch or two away. I heard him mumble, his magnifying glass hovering over a cluster of fine gears: "Gorgeous craftsmanship." "Oh, they sure don't make them like that anymore!" And when I pressed him on how long the repair would take, he surprised me with his answer: "As long as it takes."

That answer scratched of my efficiency-based mindset. However, he moved slowly and seemed very steady, so there was something about that that made me stop. He caught me uncomfortable and smirked. He gingerly closed the watch's case and replied, "You know, these old timepieces beat to their own drum. Hurry them, and they shall never learn to stay on time.

That day, I walked away from the store with an unexpected homework assignment — Mr. Chen asked me to observe and try not looking at the time for one week straight. Remember that your body remembers its native rhythm." The idea sounded borderline ridiculous in my world of back-to-back Zoom calls and compulsively structured days, but the halted timepiece was forcing a crack in the façade of my schedule, and through it, curiosity crept in.

These were the most painful couple of days. It was like I was walking around skinless. But then, over time, that began to change. I began to pay attention to what had been missed in the hurriedness of a typical life: the sunlight on the kitchen wall, my neighbour's magical spring garden, and how the city was always changing its tempo throughout my day. Instead of what my schedule instructed, I started eating when I was hungry (and strangely enough, the work that I did when it came naturally, was generally better quality work).

Suddenly it was summer, and with the season came an unexpected project at work: Building our team a mindfulness app. I should clarify that the irony was not lost on me – a digital solution to slow down. I had new eyes for it now. When we were at the research phase of things, I spoke with dozens of people about how they related to time. Their narratives resonated with my own plight – the race against time, guilt of not being productive, fear of falling behind.

I was struck by one interview in particular. Sarah, the ex-exec now making pottery, reflected on how burnout had made her reassess everything. You're working with the clay and it takes time. Hurry this portion along, and the whole thing falls apart. Life is no different, and some things have got to be given their own time"

By the end of summer, sliding into fall these discussions started to shape our project in surprising directions. We had set out to create another time management tool, but found ourselves building something far better — an app that guided users to recognize and follow their innate rhythms. All those discoveries found their way back to me through the lens of the project.

In October, my grandfather's watch came back — ticking perfectly within Mr. Chen's care. But at that point I could listen to different rhythms. I learned when I was most creative (early in the morning), that if I took a proper lunch break, my afternoon would be much more productive than grinding through it without one, and where some epiphanies broke through (aimless walking in the park).

However, the true light bulb moment appeared in November during a team presentation. Rather than cramming our slides into the allotted time of the meeting, I was leading with a new rhythm — that allowed space for authentic conversation and surprising discoveries. I found that this "inefficient" way of doing things actually produced higher-quality decisions and deeper stakeholder buy-in. Over time, my team started to take on this more rhythmic way of working and the culture in our office began to transform.

As 2024 comes to and end, I am reminded of my grandfather who once advised me — it is better to learn to dance with time as December unfolds. Now I know what he meant by that. Dance is all about form and formlessness and the way we lead or follow; it is about movement and stillness. Not the battle against the rhythm, not the succumbing to chaos – the reconciliation with movement in life.

Now, we sit the watch on my desk not as a taskmaster but as a memory. Its unhurried tick-tock is less a countdown than it is a metronome, marking time for other kinds of moves. I'm finding that time is not simply a resource to be managed; it is a partner to be honoured, a teacher for me to listen to and yes…also a friend to dance with.

The biggest lesson I learned this year is that productivity does not come from packing in as much to every hour as possible, but from discovering the correct rhythm in each moment. There are days for a quick waltz of efficiency through the workday, and others where a slow ballet on the bookshelves will suffice. The secret is not in fighting these cycles, but in learning to flow between them.

My grandfather's last words while writing these reflections seem instead of poetry under the influence of painkillers to be the essence of life. And 2024 has not only changed my work, its changed the way I live — by teaching me to dance. And as I have transformed through this, eventually, when we stop trying to be in a hurry and catch up to time, then we realise time is there waiting for us to dance with it.