I’ll never forget this bomb Jensen Huang dropped in 2023:
INTERVIEWER: What is something that you believe today that 40-year-old Jensen would’ve pushed back on and said, no, I disagree.
JENSEN: There’s plenty of time. If you prioritize yourself properly and you make sure that you don’t let Outlook be the controller of your time, there’s plenty of time.
INTERVIEWER: Plenty of time in the day? Plenty of time to achieve this thing?
JENSEN: To do anything. Just don’t do everything. Prioritize your life. Make sacrifices. Don’t let Outlook control what you do every day.
Notice I was late to our meeting, and the reason for that, by the time I looked up, oh my gosh. Ben and David are waiting.
INTERVIEWER: We have time.
JENSEN: Exactly.
The leader of the most valuable company in the world isn’t stressed out about his schedule. As someone who built a calendar and frantically checked it, I felt attacked. Jensen has infinitely more demands on his time than I do, yet he’s the one who is present, while I’m skipping bathroom breaks so I can go to back-to-back meetings where we talk in circles for hours.
Then I found out that this wasn’t a one-time thing for Jensen. It’s not like he decided to be more chill that day after getting a good pumpkin spice latte. He’s usually this zen. Sarah Guo, who's worked closely with Jensen for years as an investor, was also caught off guard when she watched him hand-deliver Nvidia’s first DGX Station to Andrej Karpathy.
Huang stayed five hours, talking about the future, giving advice, and never looked at his phone once. Guo remembers looking at hers three or four times. “Jensen has this wisdom,” she told me, “that if you know what your priorities are and you’re working on the right one, you have all the time in the world. That’s something I aspire to.”
These ideas — that most stress is a choice, and that you don’t need to be in an endless state of hurry — will keep showing up if you look for them. It’s like seeing dozens of white Corollas on your commute the day after you buy your own.
Here are a few more examples that each rhyme with Jensen’s message.
I’ve talked to a lot of recent retirees over the last few months. They all express regret about how much they stressed themselves out.
Martha tattle-told on her sister to Jesus for leaving her to do all the work while hosting a gathering. Jesus replied: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary” (Luke 10).
Buffet told his pilot to write down his top 25 career goals. Then he told him to circle the top 5 and avoid the bottom 20 at all costs.
The principle applies to software, of course. I’m sure you’ve been on a team that insists on shipping 10 new features at the same time. Maybe while watching the PM do timeline calculus to make that work, you thought, “Do users really need all this stuff?”
I’m sure you have your own list, examples of people who have somehow found success without carrying around a heavy aura.
How you react to those people says a lot about your own prioritization skills.
Does it infuriate you to think that someone could be successful yet chill? Does it feel wrong that some teams work 80-hour weeks, while others get more done in 30? Does Eskil Steenberg’s idea of finishing a software project feel blasphemous?
I’ve come to believe that the people who are unusually calm aren’t better at “managing” their time…they’re just better at deciding what deserves it.
Maybe we don’t need more time or more ways to count it.
Maybe we just need fewer priorities.
MORE
Jensen interview (acquire.fm)
Eskil talk (youtube.com)
Sarah Guo profile (colossus.com)
My calendar app (compasscalendar.com)