What Is Your Most Valuable Asset?

Some moments only work if you were in the room. The silence, the slight discomfort, a group of smart people realizing they don’t have the answer. I’m retelling one anyway, because the lesson has gotten sharper with time.

Building 324

It was a bright meeting room in Building 324 on the DTU campus. Lots of glass, clean Scandinavian lines, natural light flooding in. A whiteboard on one wall, a projector on the other. Every semester, a new cohort of master’s students would start their thesis projects under my PhD advisor, Rasmus Paulsen. I helped with supervision, so I sat in on these kickoff meetings. Ten to twenty students, sharp and eager, convinced they were about to do the most important six months of their academic lives. They were right about that part.

Rasmus had everyone introduce themselves. Then, without much ceremony, he asked the room a question:

“What is your most valuable asset?”

He didn’t offer hints. He waited.

The silence was uncomfortable at first. Then the guesses started. “My coding capability.” “My computer.” “Intelligence.” Reasonable answers from a room of technical people who had spent years being selected for those traits.

Rasmus listened to each one. Nodded politely. Waited some more.

Someone always got there in the end.

Time.

Your most valuable asset is your time. It is yours to give, but you can never get it back. There are very few things you possess with that property. Money can be earned again. Skills can be rebuilt. Knowledge can be relearned. Time goes.

Why it worked

It was one of the more effective things I’ve seen a supervisor do. These students were about to start a demanding six-month project. Many of their peers at other universities would drift for weeks before finding direction. Procrastination is the default mode of thesis work.

But he didn’t lecture them about deadlines. He gave them something better: a reason to care about structure. He followed it up with a tight weekly delivery schedule, and most students found their footing early. The question wasn’t a trick. It was the point.

He also let the room sit with the discomfort of not knowing. He didn’t rush to the answer. When someone said it out loud, it landed differently than if he had stated it upfront.

The question has gotten harder

When Rasmus asked that question, the follow-up was simple: don’t waste your thesis months. Plan your weeks. Show up to meetings with something to discuss, don’t let weeks slide by without something to show for them.

That was good advice then. It is harder advice now.

AI tools have compressed the production side of knowledge work. A first draft, a prototype, a literature search: these used to take a week and now take an afternoon. The work hasn’t disappeared, but the mechanical part has gotten much faster.

You’re left with the part that was the hard part all along: understanding what you’re doing well enough to take responsibility for it. Speed without comprehension is risk. I’ve seen this firsthand. Code that runs, passes tests, and does the wrong thing. A report that looks right until someone asks a question the author can’t answer.

If you can do more per hour, what you choose to spend your hours on matters more. The old excuse (“I spent all week getting the code to work”) is going away. The harder question is replacing it: now that the friction is lower, what are you choosing to work on? Is it what you want to be spending your time on?

I keep coming back to that meeting room in Building 324. The advice is still “don’t procrastinate,” but it goes further. Time only flows one direction. When you’re young and your calendar is mostly your own, it feels like there’s plenty of it. Then careers arrive, mortgages, children, things that are real and good but also heavy. The window where your time feels abundant closes gradually, and you barely notice until it has.

Pick what you want to spend it on and protect that choice. Rasmus was right.