One of the things I hear the most is that time behaves differently at Oxygen Conservation – in the piece below, I explore why that might be.
When you’re surrounded by extraordinary people, momentum compounds. It’s addictive. People work more, do more, and engage more – not because they have to, but because they want to. When the collective standard rises, everyone levels up. It’s like an elite relay team: the baton moves faster with each handover, the pace accelerates as the talent deepens, and because we recruit people who must grow faster than the business itself, the speed never stops increasing. That’s scary to some, but invigorating to others.
The reality is that this is not sustainable forever. Nor should it be.
To keep up with the pace, systems, processes, ways of working, the size and structure of the team – these must all evolve, and have multiple times throughout our four-year journey. That’s why we build wellbeing systems alongside performance frameworks, ensuring people are not just keeping up, but thriving within it.
But when you’re in it – deep in the flow state – you do stop noticing. Sequences align, downtime vanishes, and work becomes an obsession in the best sense. Days stretch long yet rewarding. Weeks vanish in a blink, bracketed by the sharp discipline of Monday All Staff Blackstone meetings and closed with the satisfaction of Friday’s Weekly Update to the Board.
Weekends feel short. Sometimes that’s frustrating, but often it’s wonderful. For many (if not all), Monday doesn’t feel like a return to the grind. It feels like stepping back into the arena where the energy, ideas, and excitement live.
This time distortion works in reverse, too. People who have been with us for mere months already feel like lifelong colleagues. Those who have shaped your thinking, challenged you, supported you – time with them has been brief, but the depth of connection makes it feel expansive. Years here feel like decades lived elsewhere – but in the most wonderful way. But this isn’t a matter of chance. It is the result of imagining what a team could become, then boldly recruiting with that future in mind, expanding possibilities with every “hell yes” we add to the team. This is how OC time is made, and the future is built.
And like time itself, OC doesn’t stop. It changes, adapts, pushes forward – daring time to keep up. Sometimes you feel like you’re keeping pace; often you don’t. Occasionally, you wish things would slow down; rarely do you wish they would speed up. You sometimes want the clock to freeze – just for a moment – to savour where we are. I’m getting a little better at doing that, but I’m by no means good. But that’s not how time works. And it’s not how OC works either.
At OC, time moves differently, but then again, so do we.