Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Sorry, I Just Don’t Have Time for That

There are a few people in the world for whom that line is probably true. They so overcommit to things that they actually have no time left for one more thing. For the other 99% of us, the only reason we don’t have time for THAT is that we are wasting huge chunks of Time. Waste may be too strong a term. As one wag put it, priorities are what we do, not what we say.

Just for amusement, here is a possible schedule (it probably looks a lot like mine.) Sleep 7 hours per day. In one week that leaves 119 hours. Dress, shower, eat breakfast. 6 hours per week. Commute to office, work, and return home, 55 hours. I now have only 58 hours left. Come home from work, talk to Pam as she finishes preparing dinner, eat, and relax on 4 weeknights, 3 hours. Bible study on Tuesday, 3 hours. Church Sunday morning , 3 hours. Date night or something else on Friday night, 5 hours. Down to 41 hours. Chores like drive kids around, help with housework, do the bills, fix the odd broken thing, 6 hours maximum. 35 hours left. Just for laughs I’ll throw in 7 hours for prayer, reading Bible, devotion, and such. Now I only have 28 hours to throw around ... PER WEEK! 100+ hours per month.

So, I’m left with 4 hours per day to spend as I like. Most of those are on Saturday and Sunday, to be fair. But I suspect that you and I and the other 97 like us have two or three hours on weekdays that we are just frittering away. 1200 hours per year. 12,000 per decade. 60,000 wasted hours in an adult lifetime of 50 years. WOW! How many lives could you have touched in that time.

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