actions vs allocations of time

wisdom applied

We all recall wisdom so profound that we know who told us, where the conversation occurred, and why it affected us so deeply. I suspect no single piece of wisdom pertains to everything in our lives. If I am wrong on that, I simply need more help than most people. I know that my father’s use of physics to help me learn to drive, my sole accounting course’s repetition of ‘time value of money’, and my own proclivity to default to ‘KYEOTP’ because keeping your eye on the prize seems most relevant to most functions in life are the wisdom driving me forward almost daily.

The wisdom I want to reflect upon today is about time. A nun at Notre Dame back in a galaxy far, far away (ie, 1981) heard something she relayed to me on a Saturday afternoon as we were chatting about how we spend time. We were sitting in the O’Hara-Grace residents center. She had actually heard these wise words from one of the school’s vice presidents at a dinner.

‘Time is absolutely non-recoverable. It’s the quantity and gift given to you with no understanding how much you will have but with the unchangeable reality that once a particular moment is gone, you can never recover it. Therefore,’ he advised, ‘use your time wisely to support those things most important to you. Those things tell about who you are.’

I still get chills when I think about this, probably because I have wasted to much time that I can’t get back. More importantly, however, it’s indicative of a choice we don’t realise we are making.

One can see the commitment of time as actually illuminating what we care about as much as anything else. My recollection of the particular discussion focused more on making the link between what is important and where you spend time, self reflection in other words. But one can also understand another person by examining the choices in time allocation—sometimes hard, sometimes pretty simple—in her or his life. Those equate to the priorities most important to that individual. That tells us about that person more than we realise, or at least more than I did for a long while.

When we work in a job, we are exchanging our time for pay. This straightforward transaction rarely gets described as trading a portion of your life (life being that unknown amount of time you have to use in whatever manner you choose. And you thought we were only discussing will yesterday, didn’t you?). But you are not merely receiving a pay cheque: you receive it in exchange for surrendering time you cannot recover. This is why employers are rather serious about you ‘being fully engaged’ when you are working.

Our relationships, especially with family, are another choice. I regret that when my kids were younger they did not always get as much of my time as other kids did from their parents. For reasons I won’t bore you with, I felt I needed to allocation the time to assure I was doing the best for the salary and for preparing myself for future conversations among other reasons. The trade off was that my kids used to say they did not want jobs like mine because they did not want to work as hard or for such long days. As working adults I am not sure how they would see this point but I am so aware that I cannot recapture that incredible time I spent on my job to revisit their magical childhoods. Time once spent is gone. Of course these two were so important to me but so was my job, based on how I spent my time.

If someone tells you that something is really, really, really important but then does not spend time on it, what is your analysis? What is going on? Is the person deluded or misinformed or disingenuous or what?

Time allocation equals priorities. It doesn’t mean the person directly seeks to challenge you but it’s worth pondering the strength or weakness of your mutual relationship or of how you understand the person. In other words, if you are disappointed or surprised by the individual’s time allocation, it merits reconsidering your assumptions about her or him.

I let you consider other cases on your own but you certainly can best understand your own decisions and how projections about those choices that are powerful descriptors of you as much as are any words.

I get up early because I value the time to work, the sunrise to see, the coffee to enjoy, and the quiet of the cats not crying that I am not up yet (uh, yes, this does factor in when I trying sleeping to 0500. No, locking them out doesn’t solve it, either. And I am not into penalising them for patterns they are comfortable with from when I arose at 0330 to go into the District while working). That is my awake time in exchange for sleeping time but I know what I do and why. I can’t go back to change it, even if I rue the choice later. I am fine with the result.

If any politician tells you she or he is most concerned about a particular national security threat but spends lots of time grandstanding on everything else, then the politician is kidding—himself or you. Actions create consequences—and illustrate priorities. Do they think we are dumb not to see what really matters to them?

If you ask your son or daughter to clean up the living room but the task continues staring you and that person in the face, then it’s not a priority to the other person. You have to decide whether you want to spend your precious time to free the other person from what he or she committed to do for you. You also have to decide whether it’s a priority for the other person that can change if you voice your disappointment; sometimes it simply won’t.

Time is invaluable as a quantity and as a lesson. I suspect we undervalue these measurements at our peril. We cannot go back to fix what is done so we ought listen carefully to how it goes.

Do you agree? Why or why not? What are your thoughts about what you have learned on this score?

Thank you for reading ACC today and any other day. Please circulate this if it’s of value for others. Do forward thoughts (I heard yesterday that the 15 pound turtle was probably not quite that large if it was away from water so I received dual lessons in eyeballing and turtles), rebuttals, questions, and suggestions as I value each. Thanks especially to those who subscribe with a financial support to this work: you are making this happen.

This is how I exchanged a few moments this morning.

Be safe and be well. FIN