time
Some part of me is convinced that somewhere, hidden from the public, The Powers That Be have the solutions to all the resource problems the human race needs to flourish. They have free zero-point energy; they have high-performance cars which run on Nitrogen fuel charged from the aforementioned zero-point energy; water which purifies itself; computers which never crash ….
But I think our most precious resource of all is the one they don’t have the solution to: time (unless they’ve got time travel figured out, which is too scary to even consider).
Take this weekend, for instance. I had so many ambitious plans. I had remodeling work to do. I had gardening to do. I was going to rewrite that scene in my screenplay which has been nagging at me. I was going to finally get around to playing X-Men Legends II for the first time since I bought it last December. I was going to get together with my brothers and play Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition, which I’ve owned for a while and haven’t played and yet been dying to play. I had shopping to do. An interview to finish transcribing. A site I was building for a friend for free to finish. I was going to catch up on some of the DVDs of UK TV that Danny has sent me.
On Friday night, I was convinced I could do all these things and more. I had the whole weekend ahead of me — why not?
By Sunday afternoon, while digging up mature weeds in a patch in the backyard, it dawned on me that I had hardly gotten to any of them.
This happens to me every weekend. “The weekend’s coming — I’ve got tons of stuff I want to do. Make it happen.” I’m always shocked that everything seems to take twice as long as expected, that each hour lasts half as long as expected. And yet I never seem to learn. I still grossly underestimate the time needed to do what I want to do, overestimate the time I have in which to do it. Every weekend. It’s kind of become a tradition.
The ability to manage time well may be the greatest skill you can have. Let’s face it: all the technology and automation which we were told would give us loads of free time, just didn’t. Life moves faster, is more complicated, more demanding, than it ever was before, and the technology is only propelling it forward harder. It seems like the more speed and responsiveness we imbue in our tools (airplanes, computers, cars) the faster we must go to keep up.
There’s a wonderful scene in the Cary Grant and Myrna Loy film Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Grant’s character has just learned that he’s going to have to take a train from their new Connecticut home into New York an hour earlier than he expected each morning. Melvyn Douglas, playing the old friend and lawyer, stands ready for one of his witty quips.
GRANT
That’s fine. For the rest of my life, I’ll have to get up at 5 in the morning to catch the 6:15 train to get to my office at 8. It doesn’t even open until 9, and I never get there until 10!LOY
Well, maybe if you start earlier, you can leave the office earlier.GRANT
To get home earlier, to get to bed earlier, to get up earlier, I suppose.DOUGLAS
Maybe you can get the railroad to push the train up to 4:15. Then you won’t have to go to bed at all.
This dialogue always resonated with me, even as a kid, because I could appreciate the frustration of trying to wrestle with time, particularly with the circularity of the work week. Does starting an hour earlier one morning gain you an extra hour that day, or does it cause a ripple in all your other days, moving forward to accommodate? That brief scene always made me ponder that thought.
There are some out there who seem to have solved the riddle of time management. People like, say, Steven Spielberg seem to have gotten it. Spielberg directs his films, but he also produces others’, is involved in Dreamworks SKG, pursues his own interests, has a family. Now, with someone as diversified as Spielberg, delegating responsibility is crucial. But I’m not just talking about his business day. With his family and his friends and his work, does he find the time to pursue his own interests, his own hobbies? Does he find time to kick back and read up on the latest Craftsman Style book or whatever? From my vantage point, he looks like he’s got the time management thing licked. Looks like that to me; I could be wrong.
In the last couple of years particularly, I’ve been painfully aware that I’ve diversified too much, tried to take on too much. Now I’ve got this web design thing going on — nothing’s been set aside to accommodate it, I’m just trying to cram it in. Worse yet, I seem to be the type to micro-manage, to insist on doing everything myself. I build my own computers. On this remodel insanity, I basically do it all myself, only very rarely bringing in help (largely for money reasons). With the web design, it’s going solo once again, building entire sites entirely on my own. If I’m deficient in one area of expertise, I burden my schedule even more by trying to cram to increase my knowledge in that field.
I dream of letting go. Of backing away. Of delegating. Of simplifying. But I also know that I would regret no longer pursuing one of my projects, or interests. I like to be very diverse, even though I’m aware of the risks that arise from spreading yourself too thin. But, while we all struggle to utilize our time wisely, it’s much, much more important when you’re like I am, trying to do too many different things. Jack of all trades, they say ….
It also makes it hard to just relax and unwind. When I do finally sit back to do nothing (usually out of exhaustion) I feel guilty, like the time really ought to be spent on one or another of the things that are screaming to me to be done. Yet I know that quiet moments — of doing “nothing” — are important, because they are the moments when we sit back, gain perspective, and reflect. Without those moments of relfection, you can really lose your awareness of yourself and your direction amid the frenetic activity.
Time. Our most precious resource. I’m trying to figure out how to use it wisely, efficiently. I’ve got a long way to go to get a handle on it. Hopefully all of you are better at it than I am.