What is “Titan Time” Anyway?
The Royal Rumble is a wrestling event hosted by World Wrestling Entertainment that features a 30-man over-the-top-rope battle royal as its main event. The premise of the match is that the match starts with two wrestlers. Then every two minutes, a new competitor enters the ring until all 30 wrestlers have joined the match. The winner of the match is the last wrestler left in the ring, with the others having been dispatched over the top rope with both feet landing on the floor.
But if you’ve ever timed the two minutes between entrants, you’d know that it’s a very flexible two minutes at best. This flexible two minutes is known in wrestling circles as “Titan Time” (because WWE is owned by Titan Sports).
The man who is credited for inventing the Royal Rumble, Pat Patterson, was steadfast with the two-minute rule between wrestlers entering the Royal Rumble match. But when Dick Ebersol, a TV executive, got involved in the business, he introduced the concept of “Titan Time,” which allowed for the promotion to focus on the task at hand more than the time on hand when it came to this monumental match.
I think it’s the idea of “Titan Time” that may play a role in why I’m not a fan of the two-minute rule that is well-known in the Getting Things Done methodology. I think it’s also an example of time being a construct more than anything else. This is something we can all relate to, but it’s more personal than anything else.
Time limits are useful because we can relate to them. But they aren’t the be-all and end-all. The Royal Rumble was my favourite wrestling match of the year when I still followed WWE because of the story the entire match tells and the outcome it delivers. The timing between each entrant is necessary to tell the story, but it’s the tasks completed during the match that tells the story.
I really don’t think our lives are that much different. Time matters to the story, but tasks — the things we do — matter more.
