Time
It’s time to write about time, a subject that’s been on my mind for the last week. But, ironically I have been so poor in my management of it, I have failed to actually take the minutes to sit down and do what is so important to me.
Time is a resource, we consume it every day. Unlike most other resources, time is not renewable. It is finite, and once we have spent our time, it is impossible to gain back. Time is also unique in it’s great ability to equalize. Everyone is given the exact same twenty four hour day. It is how you choose to use your hours that make up who you are, and who you’ll become.
For most of us, work is a method for money, and not usually something we are all together thrilled about spending our time on. Something that we trade our time for money, so that we can acquire the things we need or want. Work takes up forty plus hours a week, and in a perfect world we get seven hours of sleep per night. That leaves seventy nine hours of free time throughout the week that is entirely ours. Putting that time of mine to good use is prime. Those seventy nine hours are what makes up the difference between future me being happy because he invested his time wisely; or future me being depressed and regretful of his past choices in life, constantly looking in the rear view mirror for things he could have changed.
There was a thought that permeated my brain on Wednesday that I haven’t been able to shake since. It started with the time we spend as a society commuting to and from work. My boss has to drive an hour to and from his house every day just to get to his job. He has a large family, and found a good deal on a house that was far away from his job. He is prioritizing family, and finances. Two great things to be high on the list. But he spends two hours per day commuting. If you assume he works five days per week, that adds up to 520 hours per year in the car. That’s over twenty one days! He spends almost an entire month of the year doing nothing but sitting in the car. Yes, you can listen to podcasts and audio books, and make the best use of that commute. But what if he lived five or ten minutes away from his job? He could have three more weeks with his kids per year! That sounds better than any podcast I’ve ever listened to.
To me, valuing my time is a constant learning experience. I am still in the toddler stages of learning how to make effective use of my most precious resource. Finding small tasks that rob us of precious seconds is an evolving art. One that I find fascinating is our willingness to wait for advertisements on services we use often. I use pandora for music while I am writing and the amount of adds was beginning to infuriate me. And pandora doesn’t even have that many adds, especially when compared to something like YouTube. But what I realized was that if I shelled out a little bit of money (a renewable resource) I could save precious moments of my time (non renewable) not listening to adds trying to sell me things I don’t want or need.
Everyone works, everyone plays. We all make mistakes, and we’d all love a raise.
The difference between us lives in the second hand
ticking away
making or breaking each man.
How you use it is up to you, but please choose wisely
and follow through in whatever you do.