Aging Capriciously

The clock is running out! I am sure that you have heard this expression at least once in your life. However, have you ever thought that it applies to just about every day of your life? The clock is always ticking. The clock is always running down and not up. The arrow of time flies towards our final meeting with eternity. Sometimes it runs out faster than we expect and sometimes slower. Sometimes it runs out for those whom we least expect it to. The healthy jogger who never smoked, who watched his/her diet and was in perfect health may just be the funeral we attend next week. Paradoxically, our obese relative who smoked and drank too much may live to be a hundred. The experts are full of contradictory studies relating to our health. Don’t eat this, do eat that, this is bad, no it is really good, watch your fat, eat more fat, watch your carbs, eat more carbs, get more exercise, get less exercise, etc. etc.

I like the quote that says: “ask not for whom the bell tolls.” This poem from John Donne helps me to feel linked to other people. Death seems to provide a kind of a linkage. We can feel sad about deaths for people whom we do not know because we are all linked together. I have six degrees of freedom with everyone in the world. How many degrees do I have with those who have already passed away or who are at deaths door? The clock is running out for all of us. The death we meet may not be the one we desire either for ourselves or for others. Today may or may not be your last day on earth or perhaps it will be the last day for someone you love very much. The clock ticking tells us to not take life for ourselves or others for granted. Each tick is a heartbeat. Each second another person takes their last breath. Better to connect now before it is too late. We will never know when the bell will toll for ourselves or anyone else.

Who are you putting off connecting to? What if their clock runs out before you can connect? How will you feel? How can you connect to them before it is too late?

Time wasting web-sites! Have you ever felt like just wasting time? What about having a day where you can just let go of any concerns about time. We are so compulsive about time that we let it run our lives. A day when we waste time might be a day well spent. I can imagine the stress levels of the world going down. Less homicides, less road rage, less drive by shootings. Well, if you really want to give a gift to your stress levels, then you might want to visit the following website: http://freebies.about.com/od/710/tp/timewasting.htm

It has ten (I guess you could say games) that will help you to waste extraordinary amounts of time in a fun way. Alternatively, just go to Google and type in “time wasters” and you will be able to find all sorts of incredibly amusing ways to waste a little time. Spend some time foolishly. Stop worrying about time, being on time, managing time and letting time run your life. Time is not like money. If you waste money, you don’t get it back. However, each day you start with 24 hours again. Do yourself a favor, waste some time each day.

How often do you just waste time? Do you let yourself have a little fun every so often? Take some time today and just waste it. How does it feel not to be so compulsive? What if you made it a habit to waste a little bit of time each day? How would your life feel?

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today! This is another one of those bits of exalted wisdom that we learned way back in our childhood. “Under the influence of this pestilent morality, I am forever letting tomorrow’s work slop backwards into today’s, and doing painfully and nervously today what I could do quickly and easily tomorrow.” – J. A. Spender. This quote by Spender is interesting and funny since it contradicts that old wisdom about procrastination that dogs so many of us. How many of us live by these bits of wisdom that we learn early in life and never question? There are usually two sides to every story and very few things in life are universally or unequivocally true. For every bit of wisdom, there is a counterpoint.

While there may be few absolutes, this does not mean that some old sayings and wise thoughts are not without merit. More importantly, there is another moral here, which is that few things should simply be taken for granted. According to Spender, there might also be a place for procrastination in our lives. If this is true, then we may be well advised to put off doing some things until tomorrow. Perhaps, after a good night sleep, further reflection or simply having a better day, tackling the task that feels overwhelming today will be easier tomorrow. Often I do not know where to start or what I need to do. If I put the job off for a while, I can talk to others or do some further research. I am then able to come back to the task feeling more confident and competent.

Are you driven by doing things today that might be better handled tomorrow? Do you always tackle the task even when you are not quite sure what you should be doing? What sort of things do you think you would be better putting off doing until you have some help or more guidance? What should you put off doing today, since you might just do a better job tomorrow or the day after?

Don’t waste my time. One of the greatest sins of modern society is to waste time. It is even worse to waste someone else’s time. Unfortunately, there are numerous ways that you can waste time. Pace Productivity conducted surveys among 690 employees and entrepreneurs across North America. The first question they asked was designed to find out which factors impeded respondents’ productivity that were outside of their control. The following were the top ten time wasters that respondents felt they had no control over.

135 Paperwork / administrative tasks
115 Customer requests: service / problems / complaints
101 Phone calls / phone interruptions / inquiries
86 Computer / system / equipment problems
58 No internal support / other departments’ inefficiency
45 Unspecified interruptions
43 Traffic / travel
38 Meetings – too many / too long / unnecessary
38 Volume of work / not enough time
36 Staffing issues / people absent

This is a very interesting list. No doubt there are many aspects of time that we cannot control. However, the first question I have when looking at this list is the validity of the respondents’ assumption that they have “no control” over these time wasters. I admit that in several of these areas, it is difficult to have control, but the operational word is difficult. I would stop at the word impossible. I lean towards looking at what I can do to have more control over my life and I refuse to abdicate control in many of these so called time waster areas. I might only have partial control but once I assert this control, I can minimize the impact of the time wasted.

Do you see some areas above that you also feel you could take some control over? What are the biggest time wasters in your life? Do you think they are all out of your control or do you think you have some control over them? Pick one large time waster in your life. What could you do today that would help you to gain control and minimize this time waster in your life?

Procrastination is a word to be feared, yet it is a word that we are all too familiar with. The dictionary defines it as “To postpone or delay needlessly.” It also traces its roots to the Latin wherein pro-crastinate means to “put forward.” Thus, when we don’t want to do something today, we put it forward until tomorrow. Sometimes that works and other times it starts creating a kind of sandbag effect in which it just seems easier to keep putting things off. Why do we procrastinate? There are many reasons. Here are some that I have found:

• I don’t know where to start
• The task seems daunting and monumental
• I am afraid I don’t have the ability
• I fear I will not be able to finish
• I am afraid of looking stupid
• I tried before and failed
• I just don’t feel like doing it

You could probably put your own list up but I would guess that it would have some similarities to my list. Is there a secret to overcoming procrastination or a solution? I think the answer is yes. We are all intimidated by the world. The people that accomplish the most are the ones who find support from others. Every year at graduation, I listen to the seniors talk about how they could not have made it without the help and support of someone else, usually their family, a teacher or friends. Going to college for four years is a major undertaking. We can never be sure if we will pass or graduate or even manage to pay the college loans off. Anyone who starts school begins a very long and precarious journey. However, as the song says “I get by with a little help from my friends.”

When you find that you are procrastinating that can be a red flag or a signal that you need some help from a friend. Working together we can do anything. Remember Ben Franklins famous quote “Either we all hang together or we all hang separately.” Why try to do it all by yourself? Musicians, chess players, actors and sports figures all have coaches. Coaches help us stay on track and provide moral and mental support. You may not be able to afford a high paying professional coach, but I will bet there is someone in your life that could help play this role. Seek this person out and enlist them in your endeavor. The secret to overcoming procrastination is to find others who can support and nurture your effort.

What are you putting forward today that you really need to do now? Who can you enlist to support you mentally, physically or emotionally in your effort? Do you need ideas or simply willpower? Who do you know that would best provide them? By the end of the day, will you be able to contact them? If not, is there someone else who could help you? Don’t procrastinate, contact them now. You will be glad you did.

“Think big, start small and deliver quickly.” I found this advice from a Vice President of Cisco Corporation. At the time, Cisco was one of the most profitable and fastest growing firms in the world. It struck me as the way we must all do business in this highly competitive global era. We must think big. We cannot just look at the world from our own petty perspective. We must view the world from the eyes of our customers, stakeholders and other world citizens. Things we do in New York affect the Amazon Rain Forest and vice versa. We must start small. Every journey begins with a single step. Every large organization or endeavor started out quite humbly.

It is no shame to start on the bottom and work your way up. We must pay our dues. It is all too easy to see those who have achieved success and think they did it overnight. However, when you look closely at success, you see it came from very humble beginnings. Finally, we must be quick. Opportunities are like a window that opens and closes or like an elevator going up and down every few seconds. Opportunities do not last long. If you do not seize the moment, someone else surely will. Nature abhors a vacuum and an opportunity is a vacuum just waiting to be filled. Opportunities are like the waves in the ocean and whenever one comes in, it is quickly spent but soon replaced by another one. You must pick the right wave and jump on it quickly or you will miss it.

I posted Cisco’s phase over my desk as a reminder. Thinking big reinforced the need for a vision worth achieving. Without a vision, we may end up building a molehill. We need a vision but we also need determination and speed. You need determination to have the stamina and patience to build your vision one day and one step at a time. You cannot know in advance if you will succeed. You will need determination to see you over the hills and valleys. You will also need speed. While you are still contemplating your great new idea, the chances are excellent that a competitor is also thinking about the same idea. Haste can make waste, but timing is everything and today you must act fast or lose the opportunity.

What good ideas do you have that you are procrastinating over? What opportunities are waiting for you to seize them? Why are you still waiting? Who or what could help you get started? If you are not sure how to get started, find someone to help you. You will regret it later if you do not act now.

A stitch in time saves nine. Even if you do not sew, you will know the meaning of this old saying. It is probably just one of many that you learned as a child. By now, you have heard it so many times, that you no longer remember when you learned it. It is very interesting how so many of our morals and values are guided by little sayings that we learned far back in our early childhood. They tell us we learn 90 percent of our values and morals before we are six years old. Did you ever think you were learning about time management before you were six years old?

In some ways, this saying about time tells us more about planning than all the project management courses we may take later in our lives. It is simple and memorable. It has meaning and relevance because we can all relate to the idea of prevention before a cure is needed. We also all realize that once a problem has occurred it is more difficult to deal with. The time to deal with problems is before they occur. But doing this requires good timing and planning ahead for emergencies and contingencies. If you were practicing this little homily when you were six years old, you were doing contingency planning and you probably could not even spell the word contingency.

The question is “Do we still practice it?” Is it always good advice? Are there exceptions to this pithy piece of wisdom? If you were ever in the Boy Scouts, you would be familiar with the motto “Be prepared.” But how can you be prepared for all possible emergencies? How can you be prepared if you do not take the time or have the time to think ahead? It is not always easy to “Be prepared.” One secret is not to wait until the last minute to plan. Start a list of what you will need long before you will need it. You will be surprised at how the list will grow. I can guarantee you that my students who wait until the last minute to do their assignments or papers are always the ones who do the poorest job or have the most excuses why they could not get the paper in on time. “The snow came, my computer crashed, the baby was delivered, the dog ran away, and I was sick.” These things happen to each of us every day. But if they happen on the day the project or work is due, you now have a problem.

Do you wait until the last minute or do you think ahead about what you need? Are you chronically dealing with emergencies? Do you plan ahead or wait until the deadline draws near? Where would a stitch in your life save you nine today?

“Well, I’ve got some time to kill today.” We have all heard and used this expression. It means that somehow we have some unexpected free time. It is time that does not need to be accounted for or time when nothing is scheduled. Many of us wish we more often had time to kill. It is a very interesting thought. I am going to kill some time. What measures do I take to kill time or how does one go about killing time. There are lists you can find of time killers. In airports, one finds that arcade games are often used simply as time killers. However, more often today, one finds people doing their work on the kiosk type internet connections available in airports. In Japan, Pachinko parlors are a major way to kill time. But can we really kill time?

How does one kill something which does not exist? If it does exist, then is time alive? Most people would say that time is not something living or biological. However, the expression seems to indicate that time is something that has a life of its own and that we can kill. With time in such short supply, it might seem immoral or unethical to kill it. It is certainly not illegal. I have not yet heard of anyone going to jail for “killing time.” But with time in such short supply, maybe killing time should be a crime. How could anyone have the audacity to kill something that is so precious and limited? Maybe we should declare that time is an endangered species and put a moratorium on “killing” time. Religions could declare it a mortal sin to kill time. We could create police units designed to ferret out people who kill time.

We could stop killing time, but then life might not be very much fun. Killing time is actually one of those breaks that we all need to take. We manage, coordinate, plan and schedule too much of our time. Time to be killed may just be one of the last pleasures of modern life. Do you ever kill time? Do you spend enough time “killing” time? Do you worry and feel guilty because you could put the time to better use? As the song goes, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all could find more time to kill and worry less about being productive and managing our time?

I have often thought that time and money are a lot like matter and energy. Physicists tell us that matter and energy are convertible or exchangeable. Matter can be transformed into energy and energy into matter. Indeed the famous equation by Einstein E=MC2 is evidence of this ability. I believe that the same is true of time and money. If I have a great deal of time, I can do things that it would normally take money to do. For instance, I can do my own home repairs, car repairs, house cleaning etc. On the other hand, if I have lots of money, I can exchange it for time by paying someone to do these things for me and thus creating more time for myself. My theory about time and money helps me relate my time and money to each other. Thinking of them as interchangeable allows me to prioritize both my time and money and to conserve on what is most important to me. I do not treat either as them as fixed and immutable.

If I job needs to be done, I simply review my priorities and my assets (time and money are both assets to me) and decide the best way to get the task done. I might pay someone to mow my lawn if I want to do something else more productive or fun or I just might do it myself. I do not feel that I have to do all of the chores or tasks in my life. It will all depend on what it happening at that time in my life and what my goals and objectives are. A great deal will also depend on what I really feel like doing with my time and money. Without this theory, it is very easy to let people pressure you into spending time or money that you would rather conserve or exchange. For instance, I always pay a shop to do my motorcycle oil changes and tune-ups. I would rather be out riding than repairing my bikes. Many bikers abhor the thought of anyone working on their bikes. I have friends who spend more time repairing and fixing their bikes then they do riding them.

What is most important to you today? Are you sacrificing time for money when you would rather have more time? Or are you sacrificing money for time by paying to have something done you could do yourself? Are you happy with your balance between the two?

She was ahead of her times! That invention was ahead of its time! We are often amazed when we find out that some ideas or some products and services were either thought of or offered many years before they became popular. Wal-Mart was not well known until the 80’s but the company actually started in the early 50’s. U-Haul took off when all the baby boomers decided to move from the East coast to the West coast and needed a cheap reliable way to haul their goods out to California. However, U-Haul started shortly after World War II and was around for 20 years before it began its rapid growth.

What if you are ahead of the times? This might not always be a good thing. Sometimes inventions are too early and people are just not ready for them. The first computer created by Charles Babbage was not very practical due to its size and mode of operation. It took the invention and application of electricity to make a practical computer. The idea of applying nuclear energy began around 1900 but it took the Manhattan project and the invention of the atom bomb to show the reality and potential of nuclear power.

Thus, “timing is everything.” You can be ahead of your time and never see the success of your idea or invention. Nevertheless, most of us would rather be accused of being ahead of our time rather than “behind the times.” Have you ever been ahead of the times? Has anyone ever told you that you were ahead of the times? Do you have ideas for products and services that you see are subsequently developed by someone else? Do you capitalize on your ability to think ahead? Do you feel that you need to be more ahead of the times or are you satisfied with where you are now? What would it take for you to be more ahead of the times? How might this ability affect your life?