Making Time

August 3, 2018

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There’s an illusion associated with “making time”, which actually represents the ultimate oxymoron. Time is the finite resource in our tool set.  You don’t have one more millisecond of it than any other person; time is the great equalizer.  Time can be used effectively in infinite ways, although it can’t be used for making more of itself.

We can use time in the present to study how we’ve used it in the past.  We can also attempt to borrow time from the future by making plans for how we intend to use it later.  Yet the only point in time we can actually work with it is right now, in this moment, which makes it incredibly important to Maximize the Moment.

If making time is impossible, what are some of the worthwhile things that can be done with it?  Here are a few that come to mind:

  • Investing Time. The current use to create greater future value in and through others is one of our most powerful applications.
  • Allocating Time. Careful decisions around how to slice it up and parse it out are other ways of thinking about use of a scarce resource.
  • Spending Time. Whether the result of a conscious decision or default, time goes where it is spent.
  • Finding Time.  This is another illusion, because it’s right there with us; this is really another way of thinking about allocating time to different uses.
  • Taking Time.  To use time for one thing requires taking it from another; it suggests prioritizing uses to put one over another.

 
There are myriad other ways to think about where time goes, by choice or not, but it will go regardless of what we do. This reality brings me to the negative implications of:

  • Wasting Time.  Whether used by choice or given up by inaction, to allow the most scarce resource of all to slip away is a sad outcome.  As the saying goes: “Use it or lose it.”

 
There are countless competing priorities for our time in the 24/7/365 connected world, which magnifies the implications of the choices we make.  Of all those choices, being purposeful about the use of our most finite resource is worth “taking time” to consider.

Tempus Maximize


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