180. The Most Valuable Thing You Give Your Employer Isn't Your Work. It's Your Time - with Prina Shah

This podcast is for people who know that the workplace can and should be better and are ready to do something about it. You will learn practical ways to change organizational cultures and human behaviour without buzzwords, without box ticking, without performative leadership. I am the boss of Prena Shark Consulting, working with executives, leaders, and teams to create work cultures and environments that actually work for people. I am Prina Shark. I specialise in organizational culture change and human behaviour change. I am all about making work better with people who give a damn. So if you think I can help, contact me via LinkedIn. I am here to help you to find decent ways to change the workplace. Let's do this. Hello and welcome to this episode, the solo episode of the Ways to Change Your Workplace podcast with your host, me, Freena Shah. And today I want to talk to you about something very important. I think I'm going to call this episode the most valuable thing you give to your employer isn't your work, it's your time. It's something that I've been pondering on for a while now, and I'm really glad that you're here. Today, I would like to explore an idea that has been quietly sitting in the background of almost every conversation we have about work, leaderships, and organizations. It's an idea that is so obvious that we almost never stop to think about it. I'd like to ask you the simple question. What exactly do you give to your employer? Most people would answer without hesitation. You'd say you give your skills, you give your knowledge, you give your experience, you give your effort, you give your creativity. All of those answers are very true. But I think they are incomplete because underneath every one of those things lies something even more valuable. Something that cannot be manufactured, something that cannot even be borrowed, and something that can't be recovered once it is gone. We give our time not just hours, not just shifts, not just periods between nine to five. We give away pieces of our life to our jobs. We give away pieces of our lives to our jobs, okay? I repeated that on purpose. And once those moments have passed, they belong to history. No amount of money, no promotion, no bonus, and no award can actually buy them back. Yes, it might sound a little dramatic, perhaps even a little uncomfortable, but stay with me. Because I don't want this episode to become gloomy. I actually hope it becomes liberating. Because I think once we understand what work really costs and what organizations are really asking from people, we begin to see workplaces differently. We begin to lead differently. And perhaps we begin to choose differently. So I am really pleased that you've joined me. So I want to ask you a question which sounds deceptively simple. What exactly do you sell when you go to work? Take a moment to think about it. It's not what your job description says. It's really not what appears on your business card. What do you really exchange? Most of us would probably answer it with our skills, our experience, our qualifications, our expertise, our ideas, our effort. And all of things, those things are certainly a part of the picture. But like I said, they're sitting on something much more fundamental. And I think what we really sell is our time. Not just hours on a roster, not just days in a calendar. We exchange pieces of our lives to this thing that we call a job. And I believe that that changes everything. Because money definitely can be earned again, skills can be learned, markets can rise and fall. But there is one thing in this universe that never runs backwards, and that is time. Once a minute has passed, it belongs to history forever. No amount of wealth has ever allowed someone to buy back yesterday afternoon. No amount of influence has ever allowed someone to relive Tuesday morning. No amount of intelligence has ever yet discovered a way to pause life while we work. Every hour we spend at work is an hour permanently woven into the story of our lives. I wonder how often we really think about that. Because if we did, I suspect we'd be able to work places very differently. Imagine someone gave you a beautiful antique watch. Not because it was expensive, but because it had belonged to generations in your family. You would throw it in the drawer, you wouldn't toss it carelessly onto a bench. You'd handle it with extraordinary care. Not because it was simply an object, but because of what it represented time over generations of your family. Now, imagine every employee who walks into work each morning is quietly handing their manager something even more precious than their watch. They're handing over eight hours of their life. Nearly eight hours. But that's exactly what's happening. Here, they say without words, here are eight hours I will never get back. Please make them worthwhile or meaningful. I don't think organizations hear that sentence nearly enough or understand the importance of it nearly enough. When we talk about employment, we usually frame it as an economic transaction. The employer pays wages, the employee provides labor. Simple, neat, orderly. But underneath that legal arrangement, something is deeply human. An organization is asking another person to spend a part of the only life they'll ever have helping the organization to achieve its purpose. That's an extraordinary request if you look at it that way. Really think about it. Every person who joins your organization had countless other ways they could have spent today. They could have been studying, travelling, starting a business, volunteering, looking after grandchildren, learning to paint, walking through a national park. They could be having coffee with a friend, reading another chapter of their favourite book. Instead, they are here with you, choosing, at least for now, to invest part of their finite life in your organization. I deliberately use the word invest, because that's exactly what we're doing. We often think employees invest effort. Effort follows through something much deeper. They invest in time. And time is measured in hours as we know. There's a saying that money doesn't grow on trees. Perhaps it should also remind ourselves that time doesn't grow anywhere. It simply flows. I've always liked the image of a river. Stand beside the river just for a few minutes, watch the water pass. Notice something? The river never pauses, it never turns around. The water flowing past your feet now is different from the water flowing past thirty seconds ago. You cannot reach into the river and pull yesterday's water back upstream. Time behaves in exactly the same way. Every conversation, every meeting, every interruption, every delay, every pointless process, they're all little buckets dipped into that river. Some definitely are worthwhile, some really are not worthwhile. But none of the water or time ever comes back. Yet organizations often behave as though time were a lake, you know, an endless pool. As though we can simply use more tomorrow, schedule another meeting next week, put the decision into next month, delay the project for another quarter. From a business perspective it might seem harmless. But from a human perspective, it isn't. Because nobody gets Tuesday again, this Tuesday specifically. One of the strangest things about modern organizations is what they choose to measure. We measure revenue, costs, margins, profit, customer satisfaction, engagement, productivity, market share, turnover, performance. We build dashboards filled with numbers. And yes, numbers do matter. Of course they do. But imagine an organization that measured something else. Imagine if every unnecessary meeting carried a small label. This meeting consumed 187 hours of human life. Imagine that. Not labor, life. Imagine a delayed approval saying this decision has now cost four people four hundred hours of waiting. Imagine a badly designed process labeled as this system quietly removes three years of human life from this organization every year. Would we redesign it faster? I suspect we would. Because suddenly we're no longer wasting time. We're wasting people's lives. That's a very different sentence. One of my favorite analogies comes from borrowing books. I borrow many books. I need to give them back. If I've got one from you, let me know. If someone lends you a treasured book, usually treat it carefully. I certainly do. You don't fold the pages, you don't leave it outside in the rain, you return it in good condition because it belongs to someone else. Leadership is a privilege and should feel exactly the same, in my opinion. The hours your team gives you do not belong to you. You're simply looking after them for a while. Every meeting that you're on, every decision that you delay, every email you send at 10 o'clock at night, every confusing instruction, every unnecessary policy, you're writing in someone else's borrowed book. The question is, when they eventually leave your organization, will they feel that those chapters were worth reading? That's a big question if you look at it that way. When people reach the end of their careers, they really they rarely count the number of emails that they answered. They don't remember quarterly reports, expense approvals, status meetings, performance dashboards. They remember people, they remember the projects, they remember the moments, they remember the challenges that we overcame together. They remember mentors, they remember friendships, they remember opportunities, they remember growth, they remember purpose, they remember meaning. That's fascinating, isn't it? Because memory quietly tells us what mattered all along. Memory is an editor. It removes almost everything except significance. Perhaps workplaces should learn from memory. If nobody will remember this meeting in five years, did it really need to happen? If this process creates no value, why does it still exist? If this report changes dis no decisions, why are intelligent people spending precious hours producing it? These aren't merely efficiency questions, they're actually moral questions. Because every pointless task asks someone to exchange another piece of their finite existence for something that doesn't matter. And that's a trait that we should never make lightly. I once heard someone describe life as a jar filled with marbles. Each marble represents one week of your life. When you're born, the jar is full. As each week passes, another marble disappears. When we're young, the jar feels endless. We hardly notice, but over time the marbles become fewer. Eventually, you realise something unsettling. There aren't infinite Mondays, there are not infinite Christmases, there are not infinite summers, there are not infinite opportunities to sit around at the dinner table with the people that you love. Life isn't measured only by how many years we have. It is measured by how many meaningful moments remain. Which is why I wrote my book, which is called Make Work Meaningful, How to Create a Culture That Leaves a Legacy. And I really talk about the concept of life's finite nature throughout the book. So, work occupies an astonishing number of those marbles that I just talked about. Not a handful of marbles, thousands of marbles. If we're fortunate enough to work for 40 years, we're likely to spend around 80,000 hours working. 80,000 hours. Try imagining that as 80,000 pages in a book. Every working hour writes another page. Some chapters are inspiring, some chapters are difficult. Some are joyful, some are frustrating. But every page is permanent. The question isn't whether work writes our story, we know that it does. The question is whether we are writing a story which is worth reading. I sometimes wonder whether we've accidentally reduced work to economics. Because in reality it's one of the most human experiences that we share. Really, think about it. Most of us will spend more waking hours with our colleagues than we do with our loved ones. We'll celebrate birthdays together, we'll solve problems together, we'll drink coffee together, we'll support one another through difficult times. We'll witness people becoming parents. We will see others retire. We will watch young graduates become experienced professionals. We'll comfort colleagues after loss. We'll congratulate them on achievements. Those aren't simply work experiences, these are life experiences. The office, the workshop, the classroom, the hospital, the business side, the building side, the laboratory. They're not places where life pauses. They're places where life really unfolds. I think that's one of the greatest misconceptions that we have inherited. We talk about work-life balance. As though work and life exist on separate and opposite sides of the scale. As though somehow life happens outside of work. But work isn't outside of life. Work is one of those places where life really does happen. That changes the question entirely. Instead of asking, how do I balance work and life? Perhaps we should ask, how do I make the time spend I spend working a part of a life that I am proud to have lived? That's a very different question. And that's a question I really talk about throughout the the whole concept of my book. There's another analogy I found myself returning to. Imagine you're planning a long journey across a continent. You've got one tank of fuel, just one. No opportunity to refill it now. Every kilometer you drive is a kilometer that you can never drive again. You'd probably think very carefully about where you wanted to go. You wouldn't spend hours driving around in circles, you wouldn't repeatedly take roads that lead to nowhere. You certainly wouldn't let someone else waste your fuel because they hadn't planned properly. Time is exactly like that tank of fuel. Each morning we are lucky enough to wake up alive with another day's worth. Some people feel full some days. Some days feel full. Some feel almost empty because they've before they've begun. But every evening, whether we've used the fuel wisely or not, that tank empties. Tomorrow brings another tank, but yesterday's is gone forever. That is why poor leadership has a cost that rarely appears on a balance sheet. When leaders create confusion, people burn fuel. When priorities change every frigging week, people burn fuel. When decisions are delayed, people burn fuel. When meetings lack purpose, people burn fuel. When bureaucracy replaces trust, people burn fuel. The organization may survive, but people quietly lose days that they will never recover. Years ago, I spoke with someone who was approaching retirement, and after more than 40 years of working, I asked them a question. What are you most proud of? I expected them to talk about promotions, awards, major projects. Instead, they smiled and they spoke about mentoring young people, helping someone to find their confidence, creating a team that genuinely enjoyed coming to work, making difficult days a little easier for others. They paused. I don't regret working hard, they said. I regret the time we wasted, they said. I've thought about that sentence many times, which is why I actually quit the workplace and started my own business and you know managing my own time. It's not the time that they spent working, it's the time that they wasted. There's an enormous difference in that. People rarely regret meaningful effort. Parents don't regret staying awake with a sick child. Firefighters don't regret long shifts saving lives. Teachers don't regret helping a student. Understand it's something for the first time. Surgeons don't regret hours in the theatre when those hours save a patient. Meaning transforms effort. Purpose gives exhaustion dignity. But meaningless work? Uh uh That's something else entirely. Meaningless work doesn't simply tire us, it fucking empties us, I tell you. Because somewhere deep inside, we know we've traded something precious for something that never mattered. Have you ever sat through a meeting where halfway through you realized nothing was actually happening? People were talking, slides were changing, someone was writing on the whiteboard, but no decisions were being made. No ideas were emerging, no problems were being solved. Everyone knew it, but nobody said it. The meeting still continued. And at first glance, yeah, it seems harmless. An hour lost? But was it really an hour? Imagine there were twelve people in that room. It wasn't one hour, it was twelve hours. Imagine that happened every week, as it often does in the workplace. Now you've lost over 600 hours every frigging year. That's fifteen full working uh weeks, fifteen weeks of human life gone. Not because people were lazy, not because they lacked talent, simply because nobody asked the courageous question. Do we actually need this meeting? Sometimes changing a workplace isn't about introducing something new, sometimes it's about having the courage to stop doing something unnecessary. I think we've become strangely tolerant of wasting time at work, and I've got a big gripe about that. If someone accidentally destroyed tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, we would investigate it immediately. There'd be meetings, there'd be reports, there'd be recommendations. But waste 10,000 hours across an organization? Often nobody notices. Why is this? I think It's because time disappears quietly. You can't stick it in a warehouse, you can't photograph it, you can't see empty shelves where time used to be. Time is invisible, but invisibility doesn't make it less valuable. In fact, it makes it even more valuable, in my opinion. The rarest things in life are often the hardest to see. Trust, respect, kindness, hope, and time. Imagine you all you own a beautiful old sand timer, you know, like those timers that you turn around. Every grain of sand represents one minute of someone's working life. Every meeting begins with the timer turning over. You watch the sand begin to fall, one grain, another grain, another grain. You can't stop it. The only question is whether those grains are buying clarity or confusion. Learning or bureaucracy, purpose or frustration. Every workplace has thousands of invisible sand timers flowing all day, every day. Leadership isn't about pretending the sand isn't falling. Leadership is deciding whether those grains are well spent. One of the greatest compliments I've ever heard a leader wasn't that about a leader, wasn't that they were brilliant or charismatic or visionary. Someone simply said they never waste your time. What a remarkable what a remarkable legacy that is. Think about that. Not increased stakeholder value, not increased transformation of the organization, not even they inspired people. But they never wasted your time. Because underneath that compliment lies something much deeper. It says they respected your life. Isn't that really what respect is? Recognizing the value of something that belongs to someone else, a respectful leader understands that every interruption has a cost. Every delay has a cost. Every poorly prepared meeting has a cost. Not just financially, but humanly. Sometimes I think that leadership should come with a quiet promise. Not written in policy, not framed on a wall, just hell held in a leader's own heart. It might sound something like this. While you work here, I do everything I reasonably can to ensure that the hours you give to this organization are worthy of the life that they came from. Wow! Imagine if every manager made that promise. How differently would meetings be run? How differently would emails be written? How differently would priorities be chosen? How differently would difficult conversations happen? The purpose of leadership wouldn't simply be about achieving results, it would be about honoring the trust that people place in us when they give us another day of their lives. And perhaps trust is the right word because every morning, whether we realize it or not, employees perform extraordinary acts of trust. They arrive. They sit at their desks or step onto the factory floor or enter the classroom or begin the shift. Without saying a word, they trust that the next eight hours will matter. They trust that someone has thought carefully about how their time will be used. Sometimes our trust is rewarded, sometimes it isn't. Every leader should ask themselves one simple question before the day begins. Have I earned that trust today? The more I think about time, the more I realize that organizations actually don't own very much. They don't own the intelligence of their people, they borrow it. They don't own creativity, they invite it. They don't own loyalty, they earn it. And they certainly don't own people's time, people choose to give it. That's an important distinction. Because ownership creates entitlement. Stewardship creates responsibility. If I own something, I can treat it however I like. However, if I'm looking after something that belongs to someone else, I become more careful. Perhaps that's the shift that our workplaces need. Less entitlement and more stewardship. Less asking how much can we get from our people and more asking how well are we caring for the time that our people have entrusted to us. That single change in thinking transforms every leadership decision, in my opinion. I sometimes imagine that every employee arrives on their first day carrying an invisible backpack. Inside that backpack are all the things that make up their life, their hopes, their family, their ambitions, their worries, their health, their dreams, the holiday that they've been saving for, the parent that they've been caring for, the child who wants them home for dinner, that hobby that keeps them sane, the friend that they've been meaning to call, the book waiting on the bedside table, the unfinished renovation, the dog that waits excitedly at the front door every evening. All of that walks into work with them. Think about it. We rarely see it, but it's all there. Every single day. When we ask people for another hour, we're not asking in isolation, we're asking for another hour that belongs to that whole life. Sometimes leaders talk about human resources. I've never particularly liked that phrase. Not because it's wrong, but because it's incomplete. People aren't resources. Resources don't laugh, resources don't fall in love, resources don't worry about elderly parents, resources don't wonder whether they're making a difference, people do. And every workplace ultimately is a collection of human stories unfolding side by side. There's another way of looking at work that has stayed with me for years. Imagine your life as a mosaic, thousand upon thousands of tiny coloured tiles. Each tile represents one day. On any single day it is difficult to see the full picture. One tile doesn't tell you much, neither do ten or even a hundred. But over decades a pattern slowly emerges. Who you became, what mattered, what you valued, where you invested in yourself. Work supplies an enormous number of those tiles. If the colours are dominated by anxiety, frustration, pointlessness, confusion, then eventually the whole work picture begins to reflect that. But if those tiles contain purpose, meaning, growth, contribution, learning, connection, then something beautiful starts to appear. Not because every day was perfect and we know it won't be, but because enough of those days carried meaning. That's what I think great workplaces really do. They don't make every day easy. They help enough days become more meaningful to what I've just talked to. When people eventually look back, they see a picture that they're proud of. I've often asked leaders what they want people to say about them after they've moved on. The answers are usually impressive. I want to be remembered as innovative. I want to be uh build a high performing team. I want to transform the organization. Those are very, very worthy ambitions. But I wonder if there's an even better one. I hope that people uh feel that working with me was time well spent. Imagine that, time well spent. There are a few greater compliments than that. Think about the teachers that you remember, the mentors, the coaches, the managers who changed your life. Chances are what they gave you wasn't simply knowledge. They made the time you spent with them worthwhile. That's why you remember them, not because they occupied your calendar, because they enriched your life. The opposite is also true. We've all had experiences where time seemed to disappear without leaving anything behind. You finish the day exhausted but strangely empty. You worked all day, yet nothing feels accomplished. You attended meetings, answered emails, completed forms, responded to messages, dealt with the interruptions, and then someone says, So how was your day? And you hesitate, because you honestly don't know. You were busy, very busy. But were you useful? Did anything important happen? Busyness and usefulness are not the same thing. Movement and progress are not the same thing. Noise and value are not the same thing. That's one of the greatest traps of modern work. We mistake activity for achievement. Imagine boarding an aeroplane. The engines roar, the cabin vibrates, the aircraft begins accelerating down the runway, everyone feels movement, speed, power, and then nothing. The plane keeps racing up the runway, faster, louder, more dramatic, but never lifts off. Eventually, passengers begin to ask the obvious question. Where are we actually going? Some workplaces feel exactly like that. Everyone is working incredibly hard. Everyone is exhausted, everyone is moving, but not necessarily moving anywhere that matters. Leadership isn't about making engines louder. It's about ensuring that the aircraft we're in actually leaves the frigging ground. So one of the simplest questions a leader can ask is also one of the most powerful. What can I stop? Not what can I can what can I add? Not what new reporting processes do we need. Simply, what no longer deserves people's time. Every organization accumulates habits, processes, committees, approvals, reports, forms, meetings. Many of them were once useful. Some still are. Others have quietly outlived their purpose, yet they still remain. Like furniture that nobody remembers buying. Taking up space because removing it seems harder than working around it. Good leaders occasionally rearrange the furniture. Great leaders ask whether they need the room at all. And I've noticed something really interesting about gardeners. Let's use gardeners. They don't spend all their time planting. Sometimes the healthiest thing to do is to prune. Removing healthy branches feels counterintuitive, I know. But without pruning, a tree's growth becomes weaker. The plant spends energy sustaining things that no longer help it flourish. Organizations are no different. Every unnecessary meeting is a branch. Every redundant report is a branch. Every duplicated approval is a branch. Every outdated policy is a branch. If we never prune, the organization keeps growing, but not necessarily becoming healthier. The irony is that removing work often creates more value than adding work. Not because people suddenly work harder, but they finally have the room to do the work that matters. So I'd encourage you, my lovely listener, to perform a simple exercise tomorrow. As your day unfolds, occasionally ask yourself one question. If this hour became a permanent memory, would you be glad that it happened? Not because every hour should be joyful. Some work is difficult, some conversations are uncomfortable, some decisions are painful. But even difficult hours can be worthwhile. Even exhausting hours can be deeply meaningful. The question isn't whether the hour was pleasant, the question is whether it deserved a place in your life. Because every hour does become permanent, whether we notice it or not. There's something profoundly humbling about realizing that one day. All of us will attend our final meeting. Answer our final email, finish our final project, walk out of the workplace for the very last time. We rarely know when that day will come, and perhaps that's a gift. But knowing it will come should shape how we think about every ordinary Tuesday between now and then. Ordinary days, after all, are where our lives are mostly lived, not during milestones, not during celebrations, not during promotions, just ordinary Tuesdays, ordinary Wednesdays, ordinary Thursday afternoons. If organizations make ordinary days meaningful, I truly believe that they accomplish something extraordinary. I'd like you to leave or I'd like to leave you with one final image. Imagine for a moment that life is not measured in years. Imagine that it is measured in conversations. Think about the people who've shaped your life. Perhaps a teacher, a parent, a friend, a colleague, a manager who believed in you before you believed in yourself. You probably don't remember every conversation that you had with them, but you do remember how they made you feel. You remember that your time with them mattered. Now imagine the opposite. Think about the meetings where you achieved nothing, the bureaucracy that frustrated you, the manager who kept you waiting, the project that everyone knew should have ended months before it actually did. You remember those two, not because they were important, because but because they took something from you. They took time. Time that could have become something else, time that could have become a conversation with your daughter, a walk with your partner, an afternoon watching your son play sport, an evening learning a new skill, an hour reading a book, or simply sitting quietly with your own thoughts. Every unnecessary hour at work has an invisible cost. It displaces another hour that can never ever happen. And that's why I believe that time is so precious. It's not just what it is, it's what it prevents. Every choice is also a loss or for another possibility. There's another phrase that economists use. Opportunity cost. The cost of choosing one thing over another. We usually apply it to money, but perhaps its truest application should be in time. Every hour you spend somewhere means you cannot spend that same hour everywhere else. That makes work one of the biggest opportunity costs in our lives. Not because work is bad, far from it. Work gives us purpose. It gives us connection, it gives us achievement, identity, contribution, service, community. Work gives us so much. Some of the richest experiences of our lives happen because of work. Some of our closest friendships begin there. Some of our greatest achievements grow there. Work itself is not a problem. Meaningless work is. Pointless work is. Work that consumes life without adding any value is pointless. That's a big difference. I sometimes think about medieval cathedrals. Many generations took to build it. Yet the people who laid the foundations knew that they would never ever see the finished building. Imagine that. They still worked with extraordinary care. Why? Because they understood that they weren't simply laying the stones, they were contributing to something larger than themselves. Perhaps that's what meaningful work feels like. Not every task is exciting, not every day is inspiring, but beneath it all, there's a quiet confidence that what you're doing matters, that your time is very worthwhile. One of the saddest sentences I ever hear is this. I'm just killing time. Think about those words. Killing time. As though time were an enemy, as though our days were obstacles to survive. I don't believe we're here to kill time. I think we're here to honor it, to invest in it, to shape it into something that leaves the world a little better than we found it. Work should help us do that and not prevent it. If you're listening to this as a leader, I would like to ask something of you. The next time that you schedule a meeting, pause just for a moment, before you click send. Ask yourself one question. Is this worthy of the life people are about to give me? Not is it sufficient, not is it expected, not is everyone available. Is it worthy? If the answer is yes, go out, run the meeting. Prepare. Finish early if you can. Leave people people clearer than when they arrived. If the answer is no, have the courage not to hold the meeting. That single decision might give dozens of people back something that they can never create for themselves. More time. And if you're listening as an employee, perhaps there's a different question for you. What are you giving your life to? Not simply your career, your life. Because they are not the same thing. The older that I become, the more convinced I am that careers are chapters. Life is the whole book, but don't confuse the chapter with the story. A wonderful career that leaves no room for friendships, no room for family, no room for curiosity, no room for joy isn't really success. It is simply employment. Real success is broader than that. Real success is reaching the end of your working life feeling grateful for where your time went. Not because every day was easy, because on balance, your days added up to a life of meaning. And I'd encourage organizations to rethink one simple phrase. People often say our people are our greatest assets. It's becoming almost cliche. You know, we've overheard it. And while it is well intentioned, I don't think it's quite right. People are not assets. Assets are owned. People are not owned. They've entrusted to us. People should say so perhaps we should say something different. The time our people choose to give us is our greatest responsibility. I think that feels more honest, more humble, and more human. Earlier, I asked the question, what do we really sell when we go to work? I think we've arrived at that answer. We don't simply sell our skills, we don't simply sell our knowledge, we don't simply sell our effort. We exchange moments of our lives. That is the true currency of work. Money isn't simply how we account for the exchange, but the exchange itself is much deeper than economics. It is profoundly human. And once we begin seeing work that way, everything changes. Meetings matter differently, leadership matters differently, culture matters differently, respect matters differently. Because every decision is no longer about productivity alone. It's about stewardship. It's about recognizing that every person who walks through our doors each morning brings something priceless. Not because it has a dollar value, but because it has no replacement value time. I'd like to finish with one final thought. Imagine you are standing beside that river that we spoke about at the beginning. That water flows quietly past. It doesn't rush, it doesn't hesitate, it simply continues. You kneel down and you place your hand into the water. For a brief moment you feel that water move around your fingers, then it's gone. Then another current arrives, then another, then another. Life is much the same. Our days slip past with remarkable greatness. Most of the time we don't notice our days leaving us until one day we look back and realize that the years have become decades, that colleagues have become lifelong friends, that young graduates have become leaders, that children have become adults, that our own careers have become memories. The river never stopped, neither did time. So perhaps the real purpose of changing a workplace isn't simply about making organizations more productive. Perhaps it's about something far more important. Perhaps it's about ensuring that when people step into the current each morning and give us another piece of their lives, we honour that gift. We make it meaningful. We help them leave each day with a quiet satisfaction that today actually did matter. That today wasn't merely spent, it was invested. Because in the end, no organization can give people more time. No leader can create another hour. No strategy can manufacture another day. The only thing we can do is decide whether the time that people entrust to us becomes worthy of the life that it came from. And think, that might be one of the most important responsibilities that any workplace or any leader has. Thank you for spending a part of your time with me today. I am very grateful. One of the quotes that I heard long ago is from the comedian Jimmy Carr, who talked about enjoying the passage of time. That itself had such a profound impact on me that I've really valued my time. So all of the things that you could have been doing, I'm really grateful for you listening to this episode today. Until the next time, let's keep finding ways to change our workplaces, not just to make them more successful, but to make the time that we spend in them worthy of the lives that we are truly living. Over and out for now, from your host, Preenasha, get a copy of my book, Make Work Meaningful, How to Create a Culture That Leaves a Legacy, and really take hold of the concept of time that you are spending at work. I will see you in the next episode.

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