One of the richest, most successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley once told me that he doesn’t keep a schedule. His day, he told me, is entirely improvised.
“If there’s something or someone that particularly intrigues me that day,” he said, “I follow it up. I don’t make appointments in advance and I don’t keep a strict agenda, that way I’m free to go where the day takes me.”
It was hard not to throw something at him. Well, not that hard – I make it a point never to assault physically someone with a net worth in excess of US$1 billion – but it was still an irritating reminder that the very rich are able to behave in eccentric and infuriating ways, and the rest of us just have to go along with it.
I don’t know about you, but I have a very complicated daily agenda, along with a fairly comprehensive project planning software application, in order to precisely track the various tasks, promises and contractual obligations that I fall short of on a daily basis. I don’t have the luxury to refuse requests for in-person meetings or conference-call attendance. I am, in other words, the furthest thing from a dynamic, self-actualised, billionaire venture capitalist. (And I’m pretty sure this doesn’t come as a surprise.)
The term that investment bankers use to describe the kind of people who don’t follow daily schedules is “high net worth individuals” or “HNWs”, which is a rather grandly pompous way of denoting someone who the rest of us refer to, simply, as “that rich guy”. There is some darkly vicious comfort to be derived, of course, from the knowledge that bankers have an additional designation – someone they call an “extremely high net worth individual” or “EHNW” – which just goes to prove that no matter how rich you are, there’s always someone richer.
My good friend, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, is emphatically an EHNW, which means he can lord his free-form, anything anytime, no appointment lifestyle over everyone, even the merely HNW people in his immediate orbit. When I put it exactly that way, though, he looked at me strangely.
He asked: “What do you mean, ‘lord it over’? When it comes to time, I have just as much as anybody else.” His point was that we all find ourselves knee deep – or deeper – in tasks and obligations that take up our valuable, and irreplaceable, time. As far as he was concerned, we are all equally rich where it really counts, in hours of the day. The key to living an efficient, productive and joyful life was to treat every moment with a kind of vigilant miserliness. Each hour he asks himself: “Is this the very best use of my time? Should I continue with this activity? Is there anything I’d rather do?”
“For instance,” he told me, “I never watch any of your television shows. If I want to hear from you, I’ll just pick up the phone.”
“But you don’t pick up the phone to call me very often,” I said.
“Make of that what you will,” he replied.
Insults aside, my friend’s system actually works. I proved that to myself this week when I attempted to clear my agenda for three consecutive days.
I wouldn’t have bothered, except my Silicon Valley friend was so arrogantly sure that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do it that I felt compelled to prove him wrong. Also, we’ve been friends long enough that he knows the best way to get me to do something is to insist that I can’t, and then to put money on it.
“I’ll bet you 20 bucks you can’t live totally free form for three days,” he said. To which I replied: “You’re on. But let’s make it for something truly valuable. Let’s say, if I win, you have to spend an hour watching one of my television shows.”
He looked stricken. I had found his soft underbelly. How could he refuse?
As I am writing this, it is day three of our wager and I am happy to report that I have managed to float uncommitted without too much disruption to my career. On the first day, I spontaneously decided to gather a team of writers to rewrite a comedy script – something I wouldn’t have otherwise done, due to a handful of meetings and conference calls – and on the second day I sorted all the books in my library. The third day is entirely devoted to working on a book proposal I’ve suddenly became enthusiastic about.
On the other hand, I missed my nephew’s birthday and now my sister-in-law is furious; my dentist sent me a snippy email wondering why I skipped my appointment; and my agent called to ask why I had rewritten a script that nobody wanted rewritten instead of working on the script that is already two weeks late.
I’d like to say that I’ll get to all of these things tomorrow, but I’m fairly certain tomorrow is going to be spent heading up to Silicon Valley with one of my television episodes for my friend to watch. I won’t call first. I’ll just drop in, unscheduled. I know he likes that.
And I’ll save next week for making amends, catching up, and going to the dentist. I guess I’m just a Barely Adequate Net Worth individual, and we BANWs have to keep to a schedule.
Rob Long is a producer and writer in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl
