LOSING WHAT CANNOT BE RECOVERED
Monday, March 13, 2023
We’ve all spouted many clichés about how I manage and allocate our time poorly, so a ‘spring is approaching adjustment’ drives that point home.
Daylight saving time was introduced in Canada in 1908. It’s used throughout most of this country (Saskatchewan, Yukon and some areas of Quebec and Ontario don’t change) – so, for 115 years out of 300,000 years of humanoid existence, we’ve changed our clocks.
The earth doesn’t turn any faster or slower.
It doesn’t pause or hesitate.
But I did, as I woke yesterday at 5:30, my usual device-driven alarm setting, feeling confused that
I didn’t feel as well rested as I could have.
Then, a glimpse at the kitchen stove clock reading 4:30 …
That explained it and reminded me of what I already knew, but it took a minute to restore my equilibrium at 5:30 on a Sunday morning (or was it 4:30?).
Yesterday began this annual adjustment of sensibilities – daylight saving time, but I wonder, how much time do we actually save? An
Are we better for it?
A few years ago, the ‘start date’ was adjusted as an energy conservation measure, but is this tweaking the man-made clock good for mankind, and what is good for this man?
In analog days we changed watches, clocks, devices, stoves/microwaves, and dashboard clocks in our cars and had to debate in our head, yet again, whether we would invest the time required to read the manual and finally adjust that damned flashing 12:00 on our VCRs.
My stove and microwave are old-school (it only takes a minute to reset) - everything else changes simultaneously twice a year, in 24 time zones.
I’m not so sure everybody adjusts.
I still find it mind-boggling how the airlines manage to adjust everything because pilots in the air can’t slow down or speed up by an hour to keep to their schedules. It seems smart thought, in every time zone (for those adjusting), that changes occur at 2:00 AM on a Sunday, giving us a day to adjust without pausing to question what we’ve gained or what we’ve lost.
Sure, we benefit from an extra hour of daylight to enjoy through spring and summer – I love it too, but adjusting my body clock to my reality clock isn’t as easy as it used to be.
Every day, time is precious gold – it is all we have.
We gain and lose time only in our minds, but for me, these semi-annual reminders cause me to question how I measure and allocate my use, abuse, and waste of this precious resource.
In theory, the concern is that we should conserve every bit we can to augment our sleep need to be available for things we must do and desire to do with the remainder.
Yesterday, I wanted to sleep a little more …
Today, more than most Mondays starting typical weeks, this time shift coincides with some re-ordering of priorities.
Not just a prompt to inspire this column but also to examine what I don’t do enough of – allocating and spending committed for projects and people that matter most to me, which is difficult for everyone, but I’m not impressed with my schedule-surgery, the elective kind, to improve how my day looks …
Allocating is a mind-numbing cut-cut-cut exercise if we do it seriously. The second part - the doing is often far more challenging but infinitely better than when we don't give ourselves the benefit of this kind of self-exam. We benefit when we do, and so will everyone around us and everyone who depends on us.
Because we can’t do it all, nobody can.
When we try to do too much, we don’t do our best, and we’re likely sleep-deprived to boot.
My challenge – neither dilemma nor folly, is to incorporate new things only if they matter more than something else and then discard something else. It’s like doing a spring cleaning resolve I’ve done before, which is, that everything except groceries coming into my home or office must be offset by a greater volume of things being purged - its 'wait reduction' of the highest order.
Why wait for spring? Chuck it now!
Sadly, I find it far easier to purge a closet or kitchen drawer of everything not needed, not essential, and but incredibly hard to delete wishes from a wish list, tasks from a task list or priorities from a priorities list – because these ideas have something far more precious than sunk money invested in them, they have sunk time we’ve invested which we can never get back.
We have to kill our losers to make time for our winners, and we have to cut even more so we can have more time for sleep and for those who sleep with us.