OH MY, LOOK AT THE TIME
Friday Apr. 12, 2013
Whew!
Except for one day, this could have been Friday the 13th.
Lucky us.
How we keep track of and manage days and hours, our calendar, our waking hours is something that seems, for many of us, a never ending life-long conundrum that never goes away. At best, maybe we learn to manage it better . . .
My time is your time.
Your time is my time.
Hold it just a minute!
If we let others manage our stop-go, do-don’t, try-not try, and most especially our time, then we find ourselves managing nothing other than the process of shifting around schedules to rationalize how far behind we are without getting much done. Add to that a typical day’s multitude of interruptions . . . it is hard to understand productivity anywhere but the 3rd world when telecommunications, process and business skills are absent.
Though it is not something I’ve ever had desire to do, there has to be magic in lives of assembly line workers. They go to work every day knowing exactly what they will do, how long they will do it, and when they will go home – never having to worry if someone is going to change that routine on them.
My time is my time, which would not be difficult to manage if sleeping wasn’t required.
Your time is your time, to budget or squander, it is up to you because you have nothing else to spend.
Everyone tugs at our time, others schedule us, disrupt us and sometimes force us to allocate time we don’t have for things we don’t care about when we aren’t available – but somehow we do . . . we all do.
But here’s a different notion – why don’t I/you/we plot out our time based on what we want to do, when we are best able and happiest doing things we do, and then – only then – let others request a spot on our calendar, space on our timetable, time that is precious . . . just given to others as if it was their commodity to spend.
Everything takes time.
Who manages yours?
OK, sure, you do, but what percentage of it do you actually manage?
Each day brings dozens of opportunities . . .
Say yes.
Say no.
Say, maybe.
So, where are the answers kept, those ones we seek?
In others?
Or within?
Maslow’s hierarchy peaks at self-actualization – represented as a pyramid top. I wonder if we would be better served to see it as a progression to follow, a pyramid to be scaled – as if arrival there is completion of a journey, fulfillment of a set of tasks and ascribing to a set of values. I wonder if Rosling’s Trendalyzer was adapted to show our trends as individuals within our peer groups might better show our progression with circles and balls, with movement – that might be a better way to chart how we flow in life, from place to space, stage to stage, from stage-fright to stage right . . . sometimes a step ahead, sometimes a step behind with constant movement rather than stages of arrival, or departure, advancement or regression.
My point, if I have one, is that we all struggle. When we are young we get used to it because youth is when we are learning and struggling is part of the process, paying our dues, working our way alone, and up, in pursuit of maturity and credibility.
The older we get, more experiences we gather, and we realize some morning that – depending on the situation, the people, the choices we get to make and the forces at work on our lives – that we have struggles that so much resemble ones we’ve had before.
So is it a struggle we need, to move from day to day or stage to stage in life – lifting us up Maslow’s pyramid?
In other words, perhaps we get further by setting struggling aside – to focus more on our dreams, not letting them slip by, doing whatever we set our minds to doing without so much regard for anyone’s opinion on whether we are right or not, prepared or not, ready or not . . . here I come!
Some people might think I’m strange.
I think I’m normal.
Mark Kolke
295,252
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: -4C / 25F, crisp and clear, we roamed the alleys – great traction, lots of frost-heaving, fresh scenery for a change, Gusta finding smelly alley treats and greeting yard dogs who yap through fences
