Most people board a long-haul flight with modest ambitions: catch up on lost sleep, binge three films they will not remember, or wage a slow campaign against the free wine until the wheels touch down. Indian author and business leader Toshan Tamhane had a rather different flight plan.

It began, as the best stories often do, with a terrible idea at a good party. A fellow author dared him — drink in hand — to write an entire book, start to finish, in 24 hours. This was long before AI could produce a manuscript in the time it takes your coffee to cool. Toshan accepted the challenge and then, in the finest tradition of ambitious people everywhere, did absolutely nothing about it for months. Then he read how J.K. Rowling had finished the last Harry Potter book by checking into The Balmoral, a rather grand Scottish hotel, for the sole purpose of being left alone.

He loved the idea. He simply lacked the castle. So he adapted it to his own peripatetic life. Across four international flights between London and New York — each offering roughly six usable hours once you subtract take-off, meals and landing — he wrote the entire first draft at 35,000 feet. That manuscript became 24 Hours: That’s All It Takes, a self-help book built on one stubbornly simple idea: everyone, from a student in Sangli to a CEO in Singapore, is handed the same 1,440 minutes a day. What you do with them is the whole story.

Where Business Meets Passion

Writing a book in 24 hours sounds impossible. Toshan has a long history of treating “impossible” as a scheduling problem.

He is the Global Chief Operating Officer (COO) of UPL, one of the world’s largest agriculture and chemicals companies. Before joining UPL, he spent more than 18 years at McKinsey & Company, where he became one of the firm’s youngest Senior Partners.

Outside work, his CV reads like a series of dares. He has completed several ultramarathons, including the Marathon des Sables across the Sahara — hundreds of kms of sand, in which you carry your own food and your own regrets. He has climbed Ama Dablam, Aconcagua, Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, Elbrus, Kilimanjaro and Toubkal. He has invested in more than 65 startups and mentors the founders behind them, teaches at leading business schools, and has set himself the goal of reading 1,000 books. He is past 680 — which leaves 320 books and a great deal of coffee still to go.

Writing, he says, is simply one more way to pass on an idea, and the occasional hard-earned lesson.

The Challenge at 35,000 Feet

Most of us believe we need weeks of clear calendar before we can begin anything worthwhile. Toshan wanted to test that very comfortable excuse.

Instead of waiting for the mythical “right time,” he raided the hours most travellers surrender to the seat-back screen. Along with his father and co-author, Dr Ajay Tamhane, he finished 24 Hours: That’s All It Takes across four long-haul flights that added up to exactly 24 hours.

The goal was never speed. The goal was proof — that small, fiercely defended blocks of time can carry you much further than anyone expects. An hour before college. A lunch break. A delayed train. Ambition does not require a sabbatical. It requires a start.

Why 24 Hours Matter

The book offers practical ideas on time management, daily habits and steady progress towards personal and professional goals. There are no miracle hacks here, only the unglamorous arithmetic of showing up.

Its message is disarmingly simple. Every person gets the same 24 hours in a day, and the difference lies almost entirely in how those hours are spent. The clock, after all, does not care. It runs whether you use the time or merely watch it go — and unlike time, regret compounds.

The story behind the book gives that message teeth. Toshan did not simply write about using time well; he wrote the book using precisely the hours he was telling readers not to waste.

Proof That Balance Is Possible

One reason young readers connect with his story is that the writing is only one item on a very crowded plate.

Alongside running a global company, he trains for endurance races, climbs mountains, backs founders, teaches students, reads daily — and, crucially, remains on excellent terms with his family. A full life, he argues, is not built by choosing between work, health, learning, family and passion. It is built by stubbornly refusing to choose.

And each part pays for the others. Sport builds discipline. Reading supplies fresh, unexpected ideas. Teaching keeps him learning. Writing lets him visit worlds that not even a frequent-flyer card can reach.

As Toshan tells his MBA students, “Never forget to live a life even as you are trying to make a living. You die only once, but you live every single day — make the most of it.”

Every Day Starts With the Same 24 Hours

For Toshan Tamhane, writing 24 Hours: That’s All It Takes was never about winning a bet or breaking a record. It was about showing that big goals always begin with small, stubborn steps. Consistency beats talent — any day, every day.

Whatever our position in society, our wealth, our inborn talent or our background, we are equal in exactly one respect: TIME. How we use it — or misuse it — is what makes all the difference.

So if you are nineteen and waiting for the perfect moment to start the business, the book, the fitness plan or the first draft of a better life, take it from a man who wrote a book somewhere over the Atlantic: the perfect moment is a myth, and the hours you already own are more than enough. Start small. Start badly, if you must. But start today.