Volume 2 · The Discipline of Hours · Essay 152
Masterbuilder
Some ideas arrive wearing uniforms. Masterbuilder arrives in a kurta — plain, comfortable, and ready for work.
It is worth keeping in your pocket not because it is always right, but because it is always available. A tool you carry beats a perfect tool you left at home.
The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.
A pressure cooker teaches more about time than any seminar: sealed, steady heat does in twenty minutes what an open pot cannot do in an hour. Attention is the lid.
Time is the one currency the Reserve Bank does not print more of. Carry it lightly. Ideas, like umbrellas, are useful only when actually opened.