Feb 14 2011

I am writing this at 23:22 – I am not necessarily a night owl, but I have learned to stay up later and later as the need to get things done grows and grows as the tasks get bigger and more abundant as the time seems to slip away. What prompted me to write this though is the never ending series of statements of how many people are “too busy” to do all sorts of things. People work all sorts of hours and are constantly telling me how busy they are, and yet they don’t seem to get more done than others who seem to have plenty of time and do not work all sorts of hours.

I am probably in the middle somewhere. I don’t work extensive hours, some might even say I keep bankers hours (sometimes I do). But I also do not spend every waking moment at work or working on my studies (although I think some of my classmates think I do). To me it is about a few things; firstly it’s about taking every opportunity to do whatever can or needs to be done. Don’t waste time, if you have 10 minutes, do a 10 minute task! How often do we not do anything because we only have a few minutes? Why not find (or have a few in advance) things to do that fill that slot. An email, a phone call, a report or brief that needs writing, even if you only start it, when you come back to it the details will have been working around the mind so it becomes so much easier to finish.

I once read a quote from H. Jackson Brown Jr. about how Leonardo Divinci, Helen Keller, Einstein, etc. had the same number of hours in the day that we have – and look what they accomplished! There are many other examples of people who have done great things with the same 24 hours a day that we have.  I am not suggesting that one should work flat out, far from it. but how we work, and what we spend our time doing is much more important I think and that is what will make us successful or not. It’s not the number of hours we spend at work (or studying) but the quality of that time and the focus we put into it.

Try not to waste time, I struggle still, but in general I am winning – Are you an “all hours” type? Or have you learned to make the most of what time you have and balance that out with the other things you want to do? Spending all of your time on one thing makes people boring – remember what they say about Jack and his work habits….