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The numbers are against you on this
one.
Interesting
question. We hear people say, “ I
have to make up for today, I just
didn’t get anything done
“
We have said it
ourselves countless times. We get
through a day and just did not want
to get done what we wanted or simply
feel that we didn’t get enough things
done, period. Either way, we fall
back on the crutch of saying, “ I’ll
just have to work twice as hard
tomorrow, to make up for my lack of
production today.”
Is that possible ?,
working twice as hard the next day to
make up for today, if that is
possible, can we work three times as
hard the third day to make up for two
lost days? You can see
where this is
going.
First
of all, what the heck
is
“ lost time
“
Did
we lose time, or did we just not use it
properly?
Time is made up of
seconds, minutes, hours and days, all
strung together. Its impossible to
lose time. The next 5 minutes of your
time will come and go, whether we use
it to do anything or not. A unit of
time is like an empty box, a second
is a very small box, a minutes is the
volume of 60 small second boxes, an
hour is a much larger box having the
volume of 60 minute boxes and so on.
Picture these boxes on a conveyer
belt passing in front of you, not how
are lives unfold in front of us. As
these boxes of time pass in front of
you, you have the option of jumping
in and doing something or the option
of doing nothing and letting that
time pass you by, NEVER to pass you
by again.
Time is a finite,
non renewable resource. Once it has
passed you by on our conveyer belt,
that specific volume of time is gone.
Yes, there will be another box of
time directly behind it, and another
and another, but there is an end to
the conveyer belt, make no mistake
about that. Our discussion today is
the question, “ Can we really make up
for lost time?” I started off
using the term “ lost “ in this
discussion because everyone would
immediately be able to relate to it.
The use of the word “ lost “ is not
the word we should be using., the
word should be, “ can we really make
up for misused time? “ I hope we are
past the point of thinking we somehow
lost time, as if it will mysteriously
appear again, we don’t lose time, we
do however misuse it and there
for waste
it.
Hopefully we are in
agreement that we should be talking
about trying to make up for misused
time rather than lost time. Using the
term misused gives us a clearer
picture of the issue in front of us.
Going back to our example of the
boxes on the conveyer belt, if we
misuse our time on Monday, waste the
opportunity too use those boxes of
time properly , can we some how work
twice as hard on Tuesday to make up
for those wasted hours on Monday.
?
The answer is, hypothetically yes, in
reality
no.
*
Hypothetically
yes, for the sake
of argument, you work an 8 hour day,
the work that should have been done
on Monday will now be scheduled into
the time boxes for Tuesday. You do
the Mondays work on Tuesday and
Tuesdays work will either have to be
done in additional time boxes,
extending or adding on to the work
schedule for Tuesday. Unless you are
prepared to add additional hours on
to Tuesday, you have no opportunity
to do Mondays work on Tuesday.
Tuesday only has a set number of time
boxes, remember time is finite, its
not limitless, you have to do the
work of two days in one. It is
possible, but deep down in side, we
all know the road this leads us
down.
*
In
reality no is the answer we all should be
arriving at. If you start to move chunks of
activities that were not accomplished
or done properly to
the next day, what happens to the
activities that you had planned to do that
day? It’s a snowball effect, you MIGHT be
able to squeeze two days worth of
activities into one, but what happens on
the 3rd and 4th
and
5th
days?
What you get is the situation most of us
find ourselves in, rushed, stressed out,
unproductive, and most of all,
unhappy.
I hope this has
given you something to think about in
regards to how you use your time.
Knowing that we can’t keep doubling
up on the day after the day where we
just couldn’t get our priority
activities done or failed to be as
productive as we would have been if
we had planned a little bit
better.
REMEMBER, We only get one chance
to use those boxes of time as they pass us
by, we need to make the most of every
moment because we don’t get a second chance
at that unit of time every
again.
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