Time is life. It is irreversible and irreplaceable. To waste your time is to waste your life, but to master your time is to master your life and make the most of it.
These are the opening words of Alan Lakein’s seminal book, How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life.
It sounds so simple, so clear, doesn’t it? You can master your time, and make the most of your life.
But in the last month, or so, I have discovered that it is not all that difficult to lose control of your time, and feel like you are losing control of your life.
Call it a cascade of circumstances, some wonderful, some desired, and some not-so-wonderful or desired.
I have not had a “normal” time in front of my computer for weeks. It has been combination of circumstances: a Wintermester Speech Class, which met daily; relatives, including two high demand (though utterly wonderful) granddaughters; a medical emergency for my wife’s father, who lives with us (but is not quite able to be back home with us). And then, a stop-me-in-my-tracks infection which was not “serious,” but utterly draining. I managed to show up to teach, or speak, and then “collapse” with no energy for thinking and computer work. Put it all together, and this is my first day in what seems like weeks for me to sit at my computer, think, read, and ponder, like I had grown so accustomed to.
I think I learned this – all the time management principles that you can learn and follow (and I have learned them, try to follow them, and even teach them in training sessions) can be sidetracked when circumstances overwhelm.
So, I guess this is the lesson – build in some level of expectation that you too might face periods in which you do lose control of your time and your life. At least if you expect it every now and then, you will be “ready” to make it through such times.
So, time to regain control of my time and my life. Wish me luck.
First Friday Book Synopsis 