Kairos vs. Chronos: The Price of Success No One Talks About

I was hitting the number. Actually, all the numbers.

I don't say that to boast. That was just the reality. The plan was working, the business was humming, and I was climbing the mountain I had set out to climb. By every measure the business world uses, I was winning.

Then I woke up one morning and could not remember the last real conversation I'd had with my wife. One that wasn't logistics with the kids or my schedule. I could not remember the last time I sat on the floor with my kids without checking my phone. I could not remember the last time I was in a moment without thinking about the next one.

I was just producing. I was winning, and I was completely absent from my own life.

That is the price of success no one talks about. It never appears on a P&L, which is exactly why it can go unnoticed for years. It builds up quietly at the dinner table, in the marriage, and in the kids who keep growing up while you're on another call. If you are a business owner whose results look strong on paper but something feels wrong, I wrote this for you.

Two Words for Time

The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos.

Chronos is chronological. It is sequential, quantitative and linear. It's the calendar we live our lives by and the watch where we see the hand tick by. It passes whether you are conscious of it or not. You know the feeling. You get to the end of the day and think, "Where did the time go?" You get to the end of the year and ask the same question.

Kairos is very different. Kairos is the appointed moment. It is qualitative. It is a period, a season, a window in which something significant occurs. The ancient Greek definition is the right or opportune moment, or even an era.

The word also shows up in the New Testament, where it means the appointed time in the purpose of God, a divine moment when God acts. In Mark 1:15, after John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news: "The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news."

Chronos is the calendar we pay attention to. It holds our dates, our meetings, our Zooms, all of it. Kairos is the moment God appointed you for. The moments slipping past you while you manage the calendar are the ones we call kairos.

Here is what I mean by catching a glimpse of kairos. You are so present, so fully where your feet are, that you don't know what time it is. You are so immersed in the conversation or the experience that you don't even care about the clock.

Where the Word Found Me

The first time I heard the word kairos, I was walking with my friend Michael Brownlow around the farm where we record today. This was after my fall from grace, after my business had been ripped away from me. It was the tail end of COVID, when our world had been shattered and segmented, and we'd been told to stay home and keep away from family and friends.

Michael introduced the word, and I had never heard it before. It struck me deep, because I had been thinking about everything my kids had missed: time with their friends at school, the learning they missed from their teachers, the experiences that disappeared when the world shut down.

I remember thinking, "This is our kairos moment." We could reclaim those moments and experiences. We could get the clock to slow down, actually be present and get back to the people we love. Buying this farm was part of that, a place for people to come together and do inward work so they go back to their worlds as better human beings.

The word became a mantra. I asked Michael if he minded me using it in a bigger way. I named my company Kairos Coaching & Consulting, and three or four years later I named my book The Kairos Code. I owe Michael a lot for that.

I also seized that moment. I felt the definition of that word in my bones, and I acted on it.

So let me ask you: what kairos moments have you missed? The gut punches you felt in your bones and chose not to act on. The moments you weren't present enough to recognize while they were happening.

Take this as your kairos wake-up call.

Four Hundred Years, Two Mountains, One Conversation

There is a theory about kairos I love. Nobody can prove it. I've asked some of the best NBA coaches in the world how they create more zone and more flow for their athletes, and they told me, "Josh, that's the trillion-dollar question."

The theory stopped me cold when I first heard it, and I wrote about it in The Kairos Code. The idea is that God was speaking to Moses on top of Mount Sinai and to Elijah on top of Mount Carmel at the same time. That is how they both knew the Messiah would come after them and fulfill the prophecy.

The two mountains are 250 miles apart in a straight line, and Moses and Elijah appear in the Old Testament 400 years apart. Four hundred years, two mountains, one conversation.

That is not possible in chronos time. It is only possible in kairos time, the time God lives in all the time.

I cannot prove that. You cannot prove that. But something in me knows it is true. That is my belief as a Christian, and so many momentous things have happened in my own life that I know kairos time exists. I've had moments where time stopped, where past, present and future seemed to be sitting together in the very same place. Moments where I knew something without being told. Moments where the veil got thin.

If you've been alive long enough, you've had one of those moments too. You just didn't have a word for it.

For me, one of those moments was the birth of our firstborn. As a dad, or a dad about to be, you have no idea what to expect and certainly no idea what to do. Watching my wife deliver our first child, I didn't care about anything else. I wasn't thinking about my calendar or which meetings I needed to reschedule. My team took care of that. I was completely immersed in the process and the emotion of meeting my child for the first time.

Holding her, cutting the umbilical cord, making sure my wife was okay, listening to the nurses and the doctors: those moments took my breath away. The veil got thin. That was kairos.

Busy Is Chronos Thinking

We live our entire lives in chronos. We are not omnipresent. We are not transcendent. We are not God. That does not mean we can't catch glimpses of kairos. I have, and you have too.

When you fully embrace kairos, time becomes more holistic and more flexible. You can tap into higher levels of being, connection and inspiration. But kairos can only be experienced when you are fully absorbed in the moment.

A few moments in kairos will advance you further than a lifetime of chronos.

Being busy is chronos thinking. Real advancement in life comes from kairos. I named my company Kairos Coaching & Consulting because I believe the moment is now. Right now is the moment we reclaim our lives from the chronos world we live in. Not next quarter. Not next year. Not when the kids are older or when the business finally slows down. Now.

Here is what I've learned. A lot of people think they have all the time in the world. They don't recognize their own mortality, so they don't chase their goals with the aggressiveness they should.

They defer taking risks. They defer vacations. They defer saving money. I know that one well from the financial world. They defer the hard conversations, the apology and the "I love you." They are making the faulty assumption that they have the time.

They do not. You do not. I do not. We never know when God is going to call us home.

Some of you feel a knot in your stomach reading this. Maybe it's a conversation with your wife you keep sweeping under the rug, hoping things will get better. Maybe it's a call to your dad to apologize or mend that bridge. Maybe it's the trip you keep promising your family. "We'll get to that. We just have to save this much. I have to make this much. I have to get to a place where I can breathe."

I've been there.

I want to be clear. I am not telling you to put yourself in a bad financial position. I'm asking for a gut check on what you keep deferring because you assume there will be time. One of my biggest missions in life is to help people eliminate regret.

If you would regret not mending things with your dad, not telling him you love him, not thanking him for everything he did for you, make that call. You don't know how much time he has left, or how much you have left. Ask yourself one question: if I didn't have time, what would I be doing right now?

Then do that.

What Was Still Standing

My chronos life came to an end when everything came crashing down. The business had been ripped away from me in a very cruel way. The purpose I thought I was living out was gone, and so was my identity.

But everything that was truly important to me was still there: my health, my relationship with God, my relationship with my wife, my kids.

I've said this half-jokingly, but I mean it. I've never seen an epitaph that says, "Here lies Josh. He was a great business owner." Maybe one exists somewhere, but I haven't seen it. What I have seen is "He made a difference," and "Great husband, father, leader." Nobody is going to put your job title on your tombstone.

I knew how to make money. I could go do that again. I knew how to climb the mountain, and I could do that again too. But this time it wasn't going to cost me the things that meant the most to me.

You do not need to lose your business to learn that lesson. You can make the decision now, while everything you care about is still in front of you.

Your Family Will Remember Whether You Were There

Your kids are not going to remember what was on your calendar. They are going to remember what you missed.

Your wife is not going to remember what you produced, in dollars or anything else. She is going to remember whether you were there.

And you are not going to remember the deals. You are going to remember the moments you were fully alive.

If you cannot remember the last kairos moment you had, that is your diagnosis. Something is out of alignment, and it's time to tap back in.

That is why I built the LQ Assessment. LQ stands for Life Quotient, and it measures the Five Bridges of your life: Spiritual, Internal, Relationships, Environment and Legacy. Every person is walking around on those five bridges. Some are solid. Some have holes. Some are cracked, and some are on fire, and you haven't noticed because you're too busy to look.

The assessment shows you which bridges are which. It takes at most 15 minutes, and our data shows people finishing it in about six and a half. It's free. I built it because I couldn't find anything that told me the truth about my own life when I needed it.

Take the free LQ Assessment, see where you stand today, take a few meaningful steps and take it again three months from now.

Action Items From This Episode

1. Create one new kairos moment this week. Just one. Pick a conversation, an evening with the kids or a dinner with your wife, put the technology away, ignore the clock and be fully present.
2. Start your morning with identity before activity. Spend five to 15 minutes asking, "Who do I want to be today? What do I want to feel today?" before you ask, "What do I need to do?" or look at your time blocks.
3. Write down what you've been deferring. List the conversation, apology, trip or "I love you" you keep postponing. Next to each, write the reason you've told yourself you need to wait.
4. Ask the no-time question. For the most important item on that list, ask, "If I didn't have time, what would I be doing right now?" Then take the first step this week.
5. Find your last kairos moment. Try to name the last moment you were so present you lost track of the clock. If you can't, take that as your diagnosis rather than a reason for guilt.
6. Measure where you stand. Take the LQ Assessment today and put a reminder on your calendar to retake it in three months.

Five Bridges Challenges

• Relationships: When was your last real conversation with your spouse that had nothing to do with logistics, the kids or your schedule? Put one on the calendar this week and leave the phone in another room.
• Spiritual: Where have you felt God nudging you in your bones and chosen not to act? Spend ten quiet minutes this week asking what that moment was asking of you.
• Legacy: Write the one sentence you want on your epitaph. Then look at last week's calendar and ask how much of it was spent living that sentence.

In episode two of The Kairos Code, we'll talk about the reason you can't stick with anything long enough to change. I'll give you a hint: it's not what you think.

Inspire & Impact, Josh