Saturday, February 27, 2016

Don't have Time?

What do people mean when they say they don't have time?

Not that I'm being a judgmental addict. But I do wonder how we can say this about our most precious gift.

To the best of my knowledge we're all born with the same number of minutes, hours, seconds and so forth. So they couldn't mean that they were born with a broken spring in their clock or something like that. Could they?

The world would be a confusing place if we each had a different number of hours in our days.

So the real geniuses are those who use their time wisely. For example, young children are the gurus of time use. They are curious about everything. Their goal is fun and pleasure. And they pursue it with a passion. It's only when they grow up do they realize that fun and pleasure costs money. Which takes time management to obtain.

But my focus is more on those who say they don't have time to go to a meeting, to school, the gym, or to the doctor. They had time - but made poor choices about how to use it.

I'll bet you'll never hear people like Donald Trump say he "doesn't have time." And he owns over 500 companies.

Barack Obama doesn't say he doesn't have time. And he supervises a government with over 350,000 employees.

These successful people manage their time. If they don't have time to do a project they buy someone else's time. They hire people. They take in partners.

But most of us "little people" can still use our time wisely. We can decide what we'll do each day. Morning workout. Meetings. Reading. Go to work. Meditate. Visit with friends. And add time for play.

I have a friend who was an athlete when young. Now he's 70 pounds overweight because he doesn't have time to exercise. But somehow he squeezes 4-5 hours a day of TV into his life.

Many men I know didn't have time to go to the doctor or monitor their health. But now that they have diabetes, they find time to check their blood sugar levels each day. And to think about what they eat. And to exercise.

And I'm not much better of an example. For years I didn't have time to go to treatment to deal with my drug habit. But I had all the time in the world to sit in jail for drug related crimes. Years.

It's never about having enough time. It's always about deciding how we're going to use it.