Various embodiments are generally directed to an apparatus, method and other techniques for performing neighbor awareness network (NAN) discovery operations to discover a NAN cluster comprising one or more devices synchronized to a discovery window. In some embodiments, the NAN discovery operation may include communicating a cluster discovery message to join the NAN cluster, waiting a first time period for a response to the cluster discovery message, and joining the NAN cluster based on information in the response to synchronize to the discovery window when the response is received within the first time period. Various embodiments may also include disabling, by the processing circuitry, one or more operations to perform the NAN discovery operations if the response is not received within the first time period.