When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing(49)
The book The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, which tells the story of a nine-person crew team from the University of Washington that won a gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, offers an especially vivid description:
And he came to understand how those almost mystical bonds of trust and affection, if nurtured correctly, might lift a crew above the ordinary sphere, transport it to a place where nine boys somehow became one thing—a thing that could not quite be defined, a thing that was so in tune with the water and the earth and the sky above that, as they rowed, effort was replaced by ecstasy.28
That nine individuals can become one humming unit, and that ecstasy can supplant effort as a consequence of that, suggests some deeply ingrained need to synchronize. Some scholars argue that we have an innate desire to feel in pace with others.29 One Sunday afternoon, I asked David Simmons a question broader than how the Congressional Chorus singers hit their Ts at the same time. Why do human beings sing in groups? I wondered.
He thought about it a moment and answered, “It makes people feel like they’re not alone in the world.”
Back at the Congressional Chorus concert, a rousing version of “My Shot” from the musical Hamilton brings the audience to its feet. The crowd is now synchronized, too, erupting in rhythmic applause and cheers.
The penultimate number, Simmons announces, is “This Land Is Your Land.” But before the singers begin, Simmons tells the audience, “We’re going to invite you to join us for the final chorus [of the song]. Just watch for my cue.” The music starts, the choristers sing. Then Simmons signals the audience with a thrust of his hand, and ever so slowly, three hundred people—most of whom don’t know one another and will likely never all be in the same room again—begin singing together, imperfectly but with gusto, until they reach the final line: “This land was made for you and me.”
After a forty-minute ride, Ahilu Adhav exits the train at the Marine Lines station, close to where the southern tip of Mumbai meets the Arabian Sea. He’s joined by dabbawalas who’ve arrived from other parts of the city. Using the codes, they quickly sort the bags again. Then Adhav grabs a bicycle another wala has left at this station and sets off to make his deliveries.
This time, though, he can’t ride. The streets are so thronged with vehicles, most of them apparently unfamiliar with the concept of lanes, that pushing his bike between stopped cars, revving scooters, and the occasional cow is faster than pedaling it. His first stop is an electrical-parts store on a teeming market street called Vithaldas Lane, where he places a battered lunch bag on the desk of the shop’s proprietor. The goal is to deliver all the lunches by 12:45 p.m., so his customers (and the dabbawalas themselves) can eat between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., and Adhav can retrieve the empties in time to board a 2:48 p.m. return train. Today, Adhav completes his rounds at 12:46 p.m.
Ahilu Adhav delivers two lunches on a busy market street in Mumbai.
The previous afternoon Medge, the association president, had described the dabbawalas’ jobs to me as a “sacred mission.” He tends to talk about lunch delivery in quasireligious terms. He told me that the two critical pillars of the dabbawala creed are that “work is worship” and that the “customer is god.” And this heavenly philosophy has an earthly impact. As Medge explained to Stefan Thomke, who wrote the Harvard Business School case study, “If you treat the dabba as a container, then you might not take it seriously. But if you think this container has medicines that must reach patients who are ill and may die, then the sense of urgency forces commitment.”30
This higher purpose is the walas’ version of synching to the heart. A common mission helps them coordinate, but it also triggers another virtuous circle. Working in harmony with others, science shows, makes it more likely we’ll do good. For instance, research by Bahar Tun?gen? and Emma Cohen of the University of Oxford has found that children who played a rhythmic, synchronized clap-and-tap game were more likely than children who played nonsynchronous games to later help their peers.31 In similar experiments, children who first played synchronous games were far more likely than others to say that if they were to come back for more activities they would be interested in playing with a child who wasn’t in their original group.32 Even swinging in time with another child on a swing set increased subsequent cooperation and collaborative skills.33 Operating in synch expands our openness to outsiders and makes us more likely to engage in “pro-social” behavior. In other words, coordinating makes us better people—and being better people makes us better coordinators.
Adhav’s final tiffin-retrieval stop is at Jayman Industries, a surgical-supply manufacturer with a cramped two-room office. When Adhav arrives, the business’s owner, Hitendra Zaveri, hasn’t had time to eat yet. So Adhav waits while Zaveri opens his lunch. It’s not a sad desk lunch. It looks good—chapatis, rice, dahl, and vegetables.
Zaveri, who’s been using the service for twenty-three years, says he prefers a homemade lunch because the quality is assured and because outside food is “not good for the health.” He’s happy with what he calls the “time accuracy,” too. But something subtler keeps him as a customer. His wife cooks his lunch. She’s been doing that for a couple of decades. Even though he has a long commute and a frantic day, this brief midday break keeps him connected to her. The dabbawalas make that happen. Adhav’s mission might not be exactly sacred, but it’s close. He’s delivering food—home-cooked food prepared by one family member for another. And he’s not doing this once or even once a month. He’s doing it almost every single day.