Crafting Time in the Quest for Originality
Happy New Year to You and Yours!
When we welcome in a new year, I inevitably think that the year ending went by faster than the previous one. Maybe that’s just emblematic of being at a certain age where you recognize that time is a very precious commodity. Perhaps at that certain age (I’d say 50+), we finally understand that the need to get everything done as quickly as possible is a fallacy and perhaps detrimental to the valuable idea, product, or service we want to provide to society.
In recent interviews, two masters of their craft heralded time as the key to achieving the highest level of skill in their respective fields— a musician and a merchandise retailer.
Jon Batiste
Podcaster Tim Ferris recently interviewed five-time-Grammy and Academy-award wining jazz artist Jon Batiste. Ferris spoke with him about his latest album Beethoven Blues and the landscape of originality. His motivation for this album was to be in conversation with Beethoven and to extend his music. Batiste felt it was about placing himself within the music as if he was composing with Beethoven. The result interweaves classical and primarily the blues, but also gospel and flamenco, into a brilliant panoply of musical genius.
Ferris asked Batiste what he would say to a young person struggling to find their way:
“Youngster, take your time to find the prize. There’s no rush. Pace yourself. It’s your time. It doesn’t all have to happen right now.”
Batiste also said, “The measure of your greatness is the measure of your generosity. Giving your time is the highest level of giving.”
Generosity of time is key in our relationship with others, but also with ourselves.
Pierre-Alexis Dumas
Crafting One Stitch at a Time
The Birkin bag was originally designed by Jean-Louis Dumas in 1984. Luxury brand Hermès sells the Birkin bag for $9,000. At auctions, a bag can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hermès artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas (6th generation) recently discussed on 60 Minutes the production of Birkin bags and the apparent years-long wait list that has potential purchasers in an agitated state of frustration.
When repeatedly pressed about why production could not be sped up to fulfill demand Dumas said,
“Maybe there is another form of relation to the world, which is linked to patience, to taking the time to make things right. You cannot compress time, at one point, without compromising on quality.”
In other words, if you take short cuts, your product or service is bound to suffer. What you deliver correlates directly to the precision and craftsmanship put into its creation.
Dumas was noticeably irritated by the implication that Hermès could or should change their decades-long process to accommodate market needs. Four hundred artisans are trained annually to work with needles and thread (no machines in a Hermès workshop). As there are no manuals, muscle memory guides them to make the brand’s signature saddle stitch. While visiting a Hermès workshop in the French countryside, the 60 Minutes correspondent remarked that the ambiance was quiet, almost leisurely in “the slow pursuit of perfection.”
Emphasizing that their bag-making is a craft and not machine-made, Dumas said,
“Building something timeless takes time.”
In our very fast-paced world, how often do we stop to assess whether the quality of our time should be enhanced? Does a client, an employee, a vendor need more substantive time? Would a system or production process yield a higher quality outcome with more time?
As Jon Batiste said, the time is ours, and as such, the choices in how we spend it are also ours. May 2025 be filled with ample time to craft success in your endeavors.
