Life Time

  • By Karen Wilson
  • January 21, 2011
  • 256
                        
Where are our hours, minutes, days and months going? Did you do the things in 2010 that you wanted to do? Did you accomplish the goals you set? Did you indeed take the time to set goals or decide what you considered important? I particularly like an illustration that Stephen R. Covey uses in his book First Things First. He describes a man filling a glass jar with rocks, gravel, sand and water respectively. He then asks his class what lesson he has illustrated. He wants his students to understand that if they don’t put the big rocks in first, they will not get them in later. The way we choose to expend our time is just the same. If we do not decide what is important and put those things in our days first, we won’t work them in later. Too often we find ourselves rushing to do those things that seem most urgent while neglecting those things that take attention over time. If we skip one workout during a month, it probably will not impact our overall health. However, if we find ourselves skipping more workouts than we complete, over time our health will be severely affected. Putting off spending time with the important people in our lives is much the same. Toddlers become teenagers seemingly overnight. Relationships are built over time. Although, it’s a popular idea, we can’t actually make time. We can only use what we have wisely. But, our time seems so crammed. How do we make the important things in our lives predominant in our days? Just as keeping a spending record helps us to realize where our money is actually going, keeping a record of our time usage can open our eyes as well. Pick a range of time, perhaps a week, and write down how you spend each unit of time. You may find a lot of sand and water, but no big rocks. Consider some numbers. There are 168 hours in week. If you work 40 and sleep 56, you have 72 left. You will probably need two to three hours per day for eating, grooming, commuting and such. Now you have 51. Miscellaneous tasks like buying groceries, preparing meals, paying bills, cleaning house, doing laundry, helping with homework, washing vehicles, and running errands will probably, conservatively, take 10-15 hours per week. That leaves, at most, 36 hours for everything else. I recently heard a statistic that, according to the Nielsen Company, the average American watches 151 hours of television per month. That’s 35 hours per week. Okay, maybe you have a couple of favorite shows, but is television worth five hours of each day? For those of you that are thinking that you just have the television on while you do other things, I have a challenge. Do a typical task that you do with the television on. Then, do the same task with it off. No cheating. Don’t watch the clock or hurry while the television is on. In most cases, you will find that you do the task more quickly without the television. Often our attention and concentration are pulled away more than we realize. If the task requires your hands but not your mind, listen to the radio or an audiobook. You are likely to finish more quickly this way as well. We need to think about how we spend our days, not just let them happen to us. We need to know what is important to us and order our days accordingly. Once we spend our day, we cannot retrieve or relive it. In 2011, let’s pay attention to how we spend the time in our lives.


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