Aging Capriciously

Have you ever felt that you were moving at the speed of light?  Do you understand what time and speed have in common?  If you are familiar with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, the theory says that as speed increases time slows down. You might remember the famous paradox about the space traveler going away on a long journey and coming back younger than his or her parents.  How can this be true you might say? Well, according to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity it is true.  As we approach the speed of light, time slows down. Wouldn’t it be great if we could we use Einstein’s theory to help slow our day down and get more done?  If we could move at the speed of light, time would just about stand still.  Just think how much stuff you could get done.  However, if everyone moved at the speed of light, then relatively speaking, time would not move any slower for you.  This technique would work only if you or a few others were moving faster than everyone else.  

In practice, we all seem to be working on the presumption that if we could just move fast enough we could get more done.  This negates the overall benefit and we become like rats on a wheel. All of us are running and running and just staying in the same place.  Target company has a motto or credo that says something like “Fast, Fun and Friendly.”  How many workers do you know who are moving fast and feel like they are having fun?  And if they are not having fun, do you really think they are going to be “friendly” to the customers. More like, “get out of my way jerk, I have things to do and my boss says I better move faster.”  

We move faster and faster and faster but paradoxically we seem to get less and less done. I took a class in motorcycle racing once and the key message of the instructor was “You must first learn to go slow before you can go fast.”  Most of us think that by going faster we can accomplish more.  In many cases, we only accomplish less since our haste results in more rework and having to do things over again.  Most of the organizations that I have met that do not have “real” time for their customers eventually perish or they become second choice to the consumer. 

Today, concentrate on moving slower.  Forget the speed of light.  See if you can study your motions; watch your body move more slowly, exert less effort and try to move at the speed of a snail.  What differences could this make in your life? Can you do this for one whole day? Why not? What keeps you moving at the speed of light?  

This won’t take long!  How often has someone said that to you or you have said that to someone else?  A few years ago, I bought my first gas grill.  I had never owned one and Karen and I decided it was time.  To save a few bucks, I ordered it through the Internet. When it came, it was in one huge box which I had a hard time moving into the garage by myself.  I vaguely remember something about it only taking fifteen minutes to put together.  Well, it took me 30 minutes just to lay all of the parts out. Three hours and forty five minutes later, I had finished putting my grill together.  Except for putting the batteries in backwards, I was able to fire the thing right up and do my first outside grilling at the age of 60. I was thrilled except when I thought how long it took me to put it together.  I was even angrier the next day when after going to Home Depot, I found the same grill assembled.  I could have purchased it there pre-assembled; with delivery and it would have only cost me 25 dollars more. Thus, my savings did not even come close to paying for my time, not to mention my aggravation.

We often underestimate the length of time it will take to do things.  Sometimes we are misled by advertisements but often by our own misconceptions.  The thought “this won’t take long” should be a red flag for most of us. On reflection, the phrase is seldom true. They say anything worthwhile takes time.  We can do the worthless fast, but those things that are really meaningful and valuable will take more time.

What things and events do you most often underestimate?  What jobs or tasks do you rush through?  What work do you have to do today that you should allow more time for?  What areas in your life should you spend more time on?  It is a lot easier to be less frustrated and to do a better job when you can allow the right amount of time needed for the job and not worry about it “taking too long.”  

I lost track of the time. Where did the time go? How often have you heard someone make this comment? Generally, it means we were so engrossed with what we were doing that we forgot we had another appointment or schedule.  When we lose track of time, time no longer seems to exist. It is not moving fast or slow, it just does not seem to matter to us. I heard someone say recently that they did not wake up and say “gee, I have to go to work today.” Instead, they woke up and said “Wow, I get to go to work again today.” Can you imagine the difference between time for the first case and time for the second? Time in the first case is drudgery and time in the second is a joy. 

When you do not enjoy what you are doing, time is the most oppressive. You check the clock. You wonder when the time will go by. You find ways to “break” up your time. The more “breaks” the better.  When you enjoy or even love what you are doing, you forget the clock.  You don’t worry about breaks or when it is time to go home.  Sean John’s says “life without passion is unforgiveable.”  He lives this in his daily life.  His message is important for all of us.  How many of us find lives that are full of passion?  Why not?  Is such a life beyond our reaches or do we just fail to make the choice? 

The more our world is dominated by time, by pressures to do things faster, to multi-task, or to live in the fast lane, the less happy and more stressed we will be. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, if time did not matter anymore and we could lose track of time on a permanent basis? What if our lives were so filled with passion that every second was one we could live with for eternity? What if we counted Passion instead of minutes?

When was the last time you lost track of time? Can you hardly wait to go to work today or do you count each workday between Sunday and Friday? Is your life filled with passion or wondering when the minute hand will move forward?  Are you in the “Thank God it’s Friday” camp or in the “I am looking forward to Monday” camp. 

There is no time that is better than fun time.  Most children would not have a problem with this statement.  When we are young most of our time is fun time. The older we get, the less fun time we have.  Fun time is spontaneous, unstructured and not goal driven.  I get a laugh out of the corporate saying: “We work hard, but we play hard.” That is an oxymoron.  Play and fun are not about hard or about accomplishing anything.  Hard is a macho concept that denotes a phallic reference that often seems to take ascendancy over the feminine in society. Thus, working hard and playing hard are more to be valued than playing soft or working soft. When did you ever hear anyone extol the virtues of playing soft? 

Well, if you want to work hard, that’s good, but don’t play hard.  Playing hard destroys the essence of play. I look at all these young children playing in these league sports and wonder what their lives will be like growing up without any real play time.  All of their time seems guided by misguided parents who either through ego or greed think their kids will play big-league sports or get a free ride to college on an athletic scholarship. As my friend Ken noted, many of these parents think parenting is about showing up at all of their kids numerous league games and “conference” playoffs. They are not teaching their kids anything about play or about living their own dreams. 

Play is about freedom and spontaneity. It is going where you want to go, doing what you want to do and not having to answer for the results.  Retirement is the oasis of play that many people dream of.  People wait years for retirement so they can do what they want to do. Retirement is future play time for adults.  Once we retire, we can become as little children again. Can you imagine wanting to have a “hard” retirement.  I would much prefer my retirement to be soft and leisurely.  I want to take long walks in the woods, smell more flowers, kick more cans, take more long naps and get in as much unproductive time as I can get in. We all need to have more fun time.  We live in a work-alcoholic world driven by time clocks and computers.  Perhaps, there would be less stress and less crime in our society if we all had more time for fun.  I know there would be less road rage.  

How much time do you have set aside for fun today?  Do you take time each day just for fun?  What do you have to do to have more fun time in your life?  What would your life be like if you could play more and work less?

“Summertime, when the living is easy.”  This line from the musical “Porgy and Bess” by G. Gershwin seems to always resonate in my mind when the warm breezes start blowing the cold weather away in Wisconsin. We all love summer.  For many of us, it is a time of vacations and connotations of freedom from school and work.  However, why does the song say the living is easy?  I think it is because summer seems to bring that association to mind despite the fact that it is not now nor probably ever was easy.  Nevertheless, we think of the lushness of fresh fruit, vegetables, the farmers market and long days and nights.  It does not matter that we may work all summer, the dream is still there of “easy living.” 

As we get older, many of us will think back to our childhoods with fond summer memories of doing nothing but playing baseball, grilling out, fishing, swimming at the lake, camping with our friends or weekends at the cabin with our family.  Perhaps these are more traditional Wisconsin memories but no doubt you will have your own memories associated with summer time.  All over the world, people are in vacation mode during the summertime.  Perhaps you will spend your summer traveling to exotic destinations or simply taking a short trip to visit relatives.  Summer brings a longing for what we want life to have in store for us as we age.  Summer is a time of psychological retirement years before any of us will ever retire.  You might say summertime is practice for that time in your life when you really have retired.

However, now that Karen is retired and I am working less, we have seen first hand how easy it is to stay busy with one project after another. I think we don’t really want to retire, we really want to simply lead the life determined by our own choices and not guided by the “bare necessities of life.”  Summertime is a time of easy living not because living is ever easy, but because we make our choices on what we do and when we want to do them. At least that is our dream.  Are you living your dream?  I hear people using this phrase a great deal as I talk to more retirees.  Why did they wait so long?  Why not live your dream now? Its summertime and the living is supposed to be easy.  

What are your best summer memories? What did you once do each summer that is now simply a memory? What summer traditions do you still celebrate?  What do you hope your future summers will have in store for you?  

“Your time is running out” says the villain to the hero. How often have you heard this phase in the movies? Of course, we know that this is a lie. The villain’s declaration is just a cue for our heroine to spring into action. She will then surprise us with some type of unexpected near miraculous escape.  Perhaps, she will fool the villain into talking long enough so she can manage her escape. You know how villains like to explain their entire rationale for their villager.  This comment on time may be the most common phrase or at least one of the most common in all of theater. It is so melodramatic that authors can not refuse to use it. 

However, what do you think you would do if your doctor said this to you?  Perhaps at your next physical, you doctor tells you that “your time is running out.” Would you simply think of the metaphor of an hourglass with the sands of time running through it or would it strike a more essential chord of your being.  I am going to guess the latter.  You would want to know how much time you had left. You would want to know how you could escape this trap.  If there were no way out, eventually you would start wondering how you should spend the rest of your remaining days.  Suddenly time and its effective use would become the most important priority in your life.  Many of us would drop the nonessentials and focus on only the truly important things in our lives.

Karen’s mother died from breast cancer and she has always had a fear of this form of death.  We often joke about who will live longer, and she has repeatedly said “Oh, you are so healthy and active, you will live forwever.”  I seldom if ever am sick. In 13 years of teaching at Globe, I had only taken one sick day. In my 11 years of consulting before Globe, I had never taken even one sick day.  Imagine, our surprise when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer two weeks ago.  I told Karen “See, I beat you again and I was right again.”  Sort of sick humor I guess.  I know few men die of prostate cancer (could I be the first?) but the idea of having cancer and of hearing my doctor say “The bad news is you have cancer” is not what I expected to hear.  I mean, I have always been so healthy how could these f——– germs attack me.  I would think they would pick on a smoker or drinker or someone who is always sickly.  I watch my diet and my food.  Oh, well, that’s the way the diagnosis goes.  I want to live my life like my friend Harold who when he was dying said “I have no regrets.”  What a great inscription for my tombstone.  

Ironically, whether your doctor or a villain says it to you, it is a hundred percent true fact that time is running out for each of us each day.  Do you know anyone who ever said “my time is running in?”  Do you know anyone who knows the hour of their death?  Maybe, you should think more about your real priorities each day before it is too late, before someone else tells you that your time is running out.  Perhaps, you should be asking yourself today “What really does matter to me?”  

Do you spend more time doing what matters or do you spend more time on the nonessentials?  What would you change in your life if you were suddenly confronted with the fact that “Your time is running out?”  

Tempus Fugit:  The expression was first used in the verse Georgica written by Roman poet Virgil: Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus, which means, “But it flees in the meantime: irretrievable time flees.” (Wikipedia). Two thousand years have past and sadly, no one has yet learned to retrieve time.  Time is a precious and scare resource that is valued and sought after but that becomes more important later in life.  As one grows older, the law of supply and demand enforces an increased value for time.  Time is to the elderly as money is to youth.  Yet, where money can be retrieved, time cannot.  I can lose a fortune but if I waste ten years of my life, I can never recover the spent time.  Who would not want to find the Fountain of Youth?

Time clocks are synonymous with the industrial revolution.  Prior to industrial work, people thought of time as more cyclical. Time clocks went hand in hand with factory or machine and assembly line work.  The concept of a “Time clock” is an oxymoron.  Aren’t all clocks, time clocks?  The industrial revolution was a period when brawn became more valued than brains.  It was more important to measure the amount of time that a person worked (and this was equated with productivity and quantity) then the quality or creativity of their work. The information age and knowledge age has reportedly ushered in a quantum change in how we view and value work. Today, creativity and innovation have become highly prized, at least in word if not in deed.

On hears today that quality, creativity and innovation are the cornerstones of success in the 21^st century business world.  Nevertheless, we still see managers who are more concerned with the time clock as a measure of productivity than anything else.  How long did you work today is often more important than how much you accomplished or what new ideas and innovations you could come up with. We talk about allowing workers to telecommute, yet many managers express the view that: “how will I know what they are doing or if they are really working?”  “Well, perhaps they will not get their job done and then you would know!”  We may live in the knowledge age, but the industrial era mindset is still dominant in many workplaces.

It often takes a generation before minds catch up with new technology and paradigm shifts. We have 21^st century needs and technology still driven by 20^th century minds and concerns. Companies that cannot make the change are destined to go the way of the dinosaur.  The same might be said for managers who cannot change their mindset.

What do you value in your workplace? Do you measure how much your employees contribute, including ideas and innovations or are you measuring how long they work and how many hours they put in?  Do you have the power to change things?  If so, when will you go from the 20^thcentury to the 21^st?   When will you start treating your employees like knowledge workers rather than machines?