Does life just happen?
I am convinced most people allow life to happen and never examine “time”. We all awake everyday with the same amount of time, how we choose to use it is what matters.
As I contemplated this topic I started to go a direction that all of us are equal because we all have the same amount of time. Pissing away time then becomes our own fault, for instance watching “Honey Boo Boo” instead of developing ourselves. Even cleaning the house could be a more productive use of time. Questionable uses of time:
– A teenager sleeping until after lunch, thus losing a significant amount of a day in her life whereas another teenager may attend an SAT preparation class during the same Saturday morning hours.
– Drunken recovery from a hangover. This one is tough because most of us have been there. Hungover we are nowhere near productive and may miss work just to sleep off bad decisions.
– Television. I assert no other invention in the history of the world has sucked away so many possible meaningful hours. Do we need to watch reality shows? Remember Jerry Springer? Enough said.
I realized I might be wrong about time. Even though we all start the day with the same number of hours our economic circumstances impact the value we can extract from the hours in the day. If one’s survival depends on working there may be no free time for any other endeavor. Similarly, wealth, or more income, can free time by allowing payment to others whose time is worth less. An example would be an attorney paying someone to keep his lawn mowed. The $50 per week paid to the landscape company is roughly equal to 15-20 minutes of revenue generating time working as an attorney. Thus, the three hours that attorney would spend mowing his grass on a Saturday is now time away from his family or other interests.
Time. We all do start the day with the same 24 hours. I believe the key is to prioritize and find the important tasks in our life. If higher education is desired then turn off the television and go to school at night. Time with family on weekends can be gained by skipping a ballgame on television or awaking earlier.
I just found time to write this column, 20 minutes by skipping a nap on an airplane flight.
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