Narrator: It’s November 19, 1978, at Giants Stadium. The New York Giants are leading the Philadelphia Eagles 17-12 with just 31 seconds left on the clock. The Giants have the ball. All they need to do is run out the clock. The standard play is simple: the quarterback takes the snap and kneels. But on the previous play, an Eagles linebacker had charged through the line and slammed into the kneeling quarterback, starting a brawl. Now, on third down, the Giants’ offensive coordinator, Bob Gibson, has a split-second decision to make. Does he call the same safe play again, risking another violent hit on his quarterback? Or does he try something else? Panicked, Gibson calls for a handoff. The quarterback fumbles the exchange. An Eagles defender scoops up the ball and runs it in for a shocking, game-winning touchdown. It became known as the "Miracle at the Meadowlands," a moment of epic failure that cost Gibson his job and left everyone asking: why did an expert make such a disastrous decision under pressure?

In his book, Wait: The Art and Science of Delay, author and former investment banker Frank Partnoy argues that the answer lies in our relationship with time. He reveals that in a world obsessed with speed, the most powerful tool for better decision-making is often the one we neglect the most: the strategic pause.

Narrator: Before we can even consciously think about delaying a decision, our bodies are already managing time on a microscopic scale. The book delves into the work of psychophysiologist Stephen Porges, who studied the vagus nerve—a critical nerve connecting the brain to the heart and other organs. Porges discovered that our heart rate isn't just a steady beat; its variability, the tiny millisecond-by-millisecond changes in speed, is a powerful indicator of our emotional and psychological health. This is known as heart rate variability, or HRV.

Porges found that infants with high HRV—meaning their hearts could speed up and slow down flexibly in response to new stimuli—grew up to have fewer behavioral problems. Their ability to manage these superfast delays in the heart, fractions of a second, laid the foundation for better emotional regulation years later. In essence, being fast and flexible in the heart helps the brain go slow later. This biological capacity for delay is what underpins our ability to manage impulses, from a toddler resisting a marshmallow for a bigger reward to an adult making a complex financial decision. Our ability to wait doesn't start with conscious thought; it starts with the heart.

Narrator: In the world of superfast sports, it seems impossible that delay could be an advantage. A professional tennis player has less than half a second to return a 120-mile-per-hour serve. A baseball batter has even less time to decide whether to swing. Partnoy explains that the secret of elite athletes like tennis legend Jimmy Connors isn't that they have faster visual reaction times—research shows this is remarkably consistent across most people. Instead, their advantage comes from how they use the time they have.

Through thousands of hours of practice, athletes train their physical reactions to be almost instantaneous. This frees up precious milliseconds for the crucial "prepare" phase. While their body is getting into position, their brain is engaged in what tennis coach Angel Lopez calls "ball identification"—a preconscious process of gathering data on the ball's spin, speed, and trajectory. They are effectively stretching time, using their physical speed to buy their brain a moment to make a better, more informed decision. They wait until the last possible instant to commit, a principle that applies far beyond the sports arena.

Narrator: Nowhere is the obsession with speed more apparent than on Wall Street, particularly in the world of high-frequency trading (HFT), where algorithms execute trades in millionths of a second. The conventional wisdom is that faster is always better. But Partnoy presents the fascinating case of UNX, a trading firm that discovered the opposite. In 2007, to gain a competitive edge, UNX moved its computer servers from California to New York, physically closer to the stock exchange, to shave 35 milliseconds off their trade times.

The move worked—their trades were faster. But something strange happened: their trading costs went up, and their performance got worse. Confused, the team decided to run an experiment. They deliberately programmed a delay back into their system, slowing their trades down to their original speed. Incredibly, their performance shot back up, and they returned to the top of the industry rankings. UNX had discovered a powerful paradox: sometimes, there is a first-mover disadvantage. By waiting just a fraction of a second, their algorithms could better anticipate the market's movements and avoid costly mistakes. In the fastest game in the world, they learned that the optimal strategy wasn't about being first; it was about being "just right."

Narrator: For most people, procrastination is a dirty word, a sign of laziness or poor self-control. Partnoy argues that we need to make a crucial distinction between bad delay and good delay. Bad delay, or procrastination, often stems from what economists call a high "discount rate"—the tendency to value immediate gratification over a larger future reward. This is the impulse that makes a pigeon choose a small, immediate food pellet over a larger one that requires a short wait. It's the same impulse that drives a child to eat one marshmallow now instead of waiting for two later.

However, not all delay is procrastination. The book introduces the concept of "structured procrastination," developed by philosopher John Perry. This is the art of using less-important tasks as a way to avoid a more daunting one, while still being productive. More importantly, strategic delay is about recognizing when a problem requires more time to ripen. As Nobel-winning economist George Akerlof found when he delayed mailing a box for a friend for eight months in India, sometimes the immediate cost of a task is so high that putting it off is the most rational decision, freeing up time and energy for more important work.

Narrator: When we make a mistake, the common advice is to apologize quickly. But Partnoy shows that, like many other decisions, the timing of an apology is everything. A snap apology can seem insincere or dismissive, as if trying to quickly move past the issue. A delayed, well-considered apology, on the other hand, can be far more powerful.

The book contrasts several public apologies. When actor Mel Gibson was arrested in 2006, his immediate, generalized apology for an anti-Semitic rant was seen as a failure. He hadn't allowed the public to fully react, nor had he fully acknowledged his specific wrongdoing. In contrast, when comedian Tracy Morgan made offensive jokes in 2011, he waited. He allowed for public reaction, then issued a thoughtful statement, met with community leaders, and took concrete steps to make amends. His apology was a success. An effective apology requires four steps: acknowledgment of the wrong, an explanation, genuine remorse, and an act of repair. Delaying gives both the offender and the victim time—time for the offender to thoughtfully address all four components, and time for the victim to process their feelings and feel truly heard.

Narrator: The ultimate form of delay is long-term thinking. Partnoy contrasts the frantic, short-term energy of financial entertainers like Jim Cramer with the patient, long-term philosophy of legendary investors like Warren Buffett, who famously said, "We don’t get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we’ll wait, we’ll wait indefinitely." This long-view approach is also the engine of true innovation.

The invention of the Post-it Note at 3M wasn't a single "eureka" moment. It was the result of a "slow hunch" that took years to mature. In 1968, a scientist named Spencer Silver developed a weak, "low-tack" adhesive but couldn't find a use for it. Years later, another 3M employee, Art Fry, was frustrated with bookmarks falling out of his hymnal at church. He remembered Silver's seemingly useless glue and had an idea. Supported by 3M's famous "15% time" policy, which allowed employees to work on passion projects, they developed the product. It took years of tinkering, internal resistance, and patience before the Post-it Note became a global phenomenon. True breakthroughs, whether in finance or technology, rarely happen overnight. They are the product of sustained, patient delay.

Narrator: The central message of Wait is both simple and profound: in a world that rewards speed, we have forgotten the power of the pause. The book argues that for nearly every decision we face, from millisecond reactions to lifetime plans, the best approach is to delay our decision until the last possible moment. This isn't about being lazy or indecisive. It's about using that time strategically—to gather more information, to listen to our intuition, to consider the consequences, and to prepare for action.

The greatest challenge this book presents is to consciously fight the cultural and technological pressure for instant responses. It asks us to re-evaluate our relationship with time itself. So the next time you feel pressured to decide, to answer, or to react immediately, what would happen if you simply chose to wait?