Top 10 reasons why, and how, you can get time and AI working for you, not against you
Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones had it wrong when they said, “Time is on my side.” No, it isn’t on any of our sides.
For most of human history, the “next big leap” took centuries; then it shrank to decades, then years, and now it’s collapsing into weeks, and that accelerating pace is the whole story. What changes this year reshapes next year, and a few years from now we’ll look back and realize today was the slow part. If your mental timeline is still measured in decades, you’re already late. The action is happening now.
The good news: you’re not powerless. You can still influence what this shift means for you, your career, and your company, but only if you act. Doing nothing doesn’t keep things the same; it quietly reduces your options. In a compounding world, every day you wait makes it harder to regain control. The future is already in motion. The question is whether you choose to be part of it while the window is still open.
We’re sharing this because we’d rather be a forcing function that pushes you to act while you still have real choices than watch from the sidelines as time quietly takes those options away.
Whether you’re an employee trying to avoid becoming obsolete or a leader fighting to keep your company (and your people) on the right side of history, this isn’t about getting a slightly better performance review. It’s about survival. Here are 10 ways we rationalize waiting, and what you can do, individually and organizationally, to get time back on your side while you still can.
1. Change Is Emotional
Change feels overwhelming, so we convince ourselves that today isn’t the “right moment,” but that’s how people get stuck. Stop worrying about what you’re leaving and start feeling where you’re going. The discomfort you’re avoiding is the same discomfort that will shape your competitors into leaders if they face it and you don’t.
2. Perfect Timing Is Paralyzing
Oz Pearlman said it clearly: “If you wait for the perfect moment to do something, odds are you’re going to wait a long time… there’s always going to be an excuse available.” And with hindsight, everything looks like a neat puzzle. But in real time? You never know if the piece in your hand is perfect. Recognize that even if today were perfect, today is already changing. Acting imperfectly beats waiting flawlessly.
3. Days Turn to Weeks, Weeks Turn to Months
“Days into weeks and weeks into months” is what I say when smart people stall. Your internal clock stretches decisions out while the world compresses progress inward. You think you’re being patient; time thinks you’re surrendering. Create a forcing function, and tell someone you trust what it is.
4. “My Situation Is Different”
Everyone thinks they’re the exception: the executive waiting to embrace AI, the employee afraid to leap, the company clinging to technology conceived before Steve Jobs created the iPhone. Fourteen years after his death, some organizations are still operating on pre-iPhone assumptions. Take a hard look at yourself and your environment and question everything. Your situation is not special; it’s just delayed.
5. Buckle Up
For decades, work felt like cruising on an airplane. You didn’t feel how fast you were actually moving. Now you’re on a rocket. It feels quiet, almost calm, but you’re hurtling through space at impossible speed. It will get bumpy. Expect the unexpected and respect the turbulence.
6. Become an Entrepreneur
If your days are swallowed by meetings, old problems, and obligations you didn’t choose, you cannot keep up with where the world is going. You’re wasting your sharpest hours on things that don’t matter, and the stress burns through the hours that remain. Take control of your destiny. Stop depending on people and systems you cannot influence. Entrepreneurship, literal or figurative, is the antidote to stagnation.
7. Past Results Are Not Indicators of the Future
The job market is quietly collapsing in front of us. The layoffs get headlines, but the missing new jobs are the real story. Graduates are fleeing into more school or unrelated work. Older workers are being retired early. And the biggest trap? Believing “things always work out” because they used to. Stop comparing the risks of taking a leap to a status quo that will no longer exist.
8. “I’m Faster Than the Bear”
Every day brings new articles about AI’s acceleration, both frightening and validating. Yes, you may be ahead of most people today, but the bear is not a normal bear. It’s faster, hungrier, and closing the gap. The old rule, “I don’t have to be faster than the bear, just the guy next to me,” no longer applies. Being ahead of your peers is not enough. Stop benchmarking your speed against people who are also too slow.
9. Humans Rule, for Now
AI is powerful, empowering, limitless, and flawed. Humans are resilient, creative, intuitive, and flawed. The edge goes to those who combine both. Master the tools, let AI do what it’s good at, and invest deeply in the uniquely human capabilities that machines can’t replicate.
10. Knowing Is Not Enough
Having next week’s newspaper only makes a difference if you use it: by buying stocks, playing the ponies, or making other bets that turn information into advantage. Talking about it, knowing it, and thinking about it don’t really help you capitalize on it. Playing with ChatGPT on your own, using AI in a bureaucratic company, or building apps with Claude is a nice start, but it’s not enough. Time to get a new job, start your own business, take the leap, or, if you’re a leader, make the hard calls that force your company to adapt now, not later.
Don’t Wait for the Rest of Your Life to Start
In the classic 1980’s movie, When Harry Met Sally, Billy Crystal says: “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” — It worked on my wife, and we’re 30+ years in.
The same applies to your career, your company, and your future. When you recognize it’s time to act, you want the rest of your life, and your relevance, to start as soon as possible. Don’t look back later and realize you had the foresight but waited until it was too late.
Don’t waste your potential. Don’t waste this moment. Don’t wait until your choices shrink into a corner.
My free advice is: move now, before “too late” becomes the only option left.