Peter Drucker once wrote, “Those who achieve results know that time is the limiting factor.”

Time cannot be borrowed. It cannot be bought. Every person receives the same twenty-four hours each day. The difference lies in how those hours are used.

From the moment he joined the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, Shohei Ohtani was known for structuring his life around baseball and sleep. Yet even then, he felt time slipping away.

When a reporter once asked him what he wanted for Christmas, he replied:

“I want one more month.”

It wasn’t a joke.

At age 21, when asked what was necessary to sustain a long career in baseball, Ohtani said that ten or even twenty years would not be enough to acquire all the skills a player should develop. Because of that, he tried to treat every spare moment carefully.

“I don’t really have idle time. I want to make sure I use it well.”

At 21, many people feel they have endless time ahead of them. Ohtani felt the opposite.

He wanted to absorb every aspect of baseball — pitching, hitting, conditioning, mechanics, mental approach. He understood that his playing career would likely span twenty to twenty-five years at most. That window, to him, was precious and limited.

“It’s impossible to master every skill, but I want to get even a little closer to the ideal form.”

Perfection may be unreachable.

But proximity to it is worth a lifetime.

For Ohtani, time is not something to spend.

It is something to invest.

Source

This quote comes from a Japanese book published in Japan and is not currently available in English.

Chasing Shohei Ohtani: A Beat Reporter’s 10-Year Chronicle, p.69