Key Learning: Time is finite, even when everything else around you is designed to expand. If you don’t decide what deserves it, everything will.

There are moments that do not introduce a new idea; they just make an existing one unavoidable.

This month, I stopped trying to outrun the most basic truth of existence: time is finite. At Amazon, I lived by the Law of Expansion. In that world, goals are designed to be infinite. As soon as you hit one KPI, the bar is raised. Because the system is built for growth, it naturally asks for more of your time to fill the new space. It is a culture that means you never actually arrive; you just iterate. I learned that if you do not set a hard boundary, the system will happily take 100% of your life. In that framework, time is just a resource to be managed, optimized, and ruthlessly filled to meet the next metric.

The friction of this month showed up when I realized that while I have left the company, that Expansion habit is still running in my head. It manifested during the club golf championship. I shot the worst game of my season, a performance I knew was well below my capability. But because the scores were posted on a public leaderboard, the internal disappointment was compounded by external embarrassment. I was allowing a hobby to expand and consume my headspace as if it were a failed business review, forgetting that the hours I spent in that shame were hours I could never get back.

But being integrated into this Florida community has forced a recalibration. My friends here are teaching me that while tasks and targets will always try to expand, the time itself is a fixed currency. They are teaching me about the power of presence and the weight of a true goodbye.

When you place the drive to scale next to a reality that is limited, the prioritization becomes immediate. The noise of a scoreboard does not just get quieter; it evaporates. What felt urgent before starts to look different when you realize how small the window is to be present for what matters. That is what shifted for me this month. I didn’t leave to do less. I left to be more available for the moments I would have otherwise filled.

I found the resolution to this tension in the swallow-tailed kites. These birds are the elite athletes of the sky, perpetually in motion, even eating and drinking while in flight. They are a masterclass in efficiency, but they only pass through Florida for a few months. I have been tracking them all season, often seeing them only when I was on the golf course without a camera. My old brain viewed these as missed opportunities, a failure of planning or a lack of readiness.

In mid-April, I went out on a four-hour walk specifically to find them. I stopped trying to manage the outcome and just waited. I heard a rustle behind me and one flew directly over my head with a frog in its talons. In my old life, I would have immediately audited the success of the shot by checking the focus, the lighting, and the composition. But in that moment, I just felt the awe. Persistence had finally met the moment. Like the kite, I was finally in motion without the need to land on a result. It was a masterpiece that required no optimization, only presence.

As I prepare to head back to Seattle, I realize how pivotal the last five months have been. The birds and the friends I have made here have helped me see the limits of the Law of Expansion. I have stopped treating time like something I manage and started treating it like something that runs out.