Schedule

Your schedule is a product of how you allocate time.

Each day we have allocated our time. There are the eight or nine theoretical hours you are sleeping. The two and a half hours you are eating. The eight hours you are working, (and sometimes more.) And then then the two and half hours you spend as “recreational time” whether watching TV, exercising, spending time with your spouse/child(ren). You decide all of this time.

Your schedule is as full or empty as you make it.

Your to do list. Your calendar. The sports and events your family does are all decided by you (and probably you and your spouse.)

Whether or not you have time to go to coffee with friends is decided by you. Your calendar does not decide these things. You are not owned by this digital or paperback calendar with words and time written in it.

Your calendar is filled by you and only you have the power to stop filling it.

But when it is full, you are then considered “busy”.

So when your friends ask you how you have been and you reply with, “So busy.” It is not because of external factors that make you busy. It is your own fault. You make yourself busy. And the issue with getting busy is, busyness breed more busyness.

You have to start purging your schedule of the things that do not belong on your calendar. You have to develop your priorities and cut out the cancer like a surgeon with a scalpel, cut out the parts that do not belong.

Too many work meetings? Running late? Start rescheduling them. I would venture a guess when your work meetings regularly run after hours, you regularly start choosing the fast option for dinner rather than cooking. Paying a few dollars for some cheeseburgers, fries, and pop becomes the easier option rather than getting home and preparing dinner.

Then, because you are SO busy, you have to reschedule whatever it was you were supposed to be doing instead of working and getting you and the family dinner. So you reschedule it to another day. Not because you have time on that other day, but instead because you need to reschedule your plans and that day now has too much going on and you will definitely be exhausted by the end of it.

And thus, busy-ness breeds busy-ness.

When was the last time politely said in a meeting, “I’m sorry, I need to go. My family is waiting for me.” In the meeting notorious for running past the scheduled end time?

Does your schedule rule you? Do you actually stop and calculate when you need to go to bed to get eight hours of sleep?

Or, like a sickness, you do wait until you have symptoms of being tired before you get in bed?

When was the last time you set your priorities in life, built your calendar around your priorities, and purged the rest?

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Name Time

Giving your money a name or a category is nothing new. Dave Ramsey even says it is essential for budgeting. You give your money a name before you spend it so it ends up where it needs to go.

Ideally, you would prevent yourself from spending money frivolously. But there are tools like YNAB [You Need A Budget] or Mint that will automate the process helping you retroactively finding out where your money through classifications.

But still, why stop there? What about time?

Our time is worth more than money. We have a limited number of years, months, days, and hours. Why do we only dictate the purpose of our money. We can earn more money. We only get so much time.

We cannot invent more time. We cannot rewind the clock.

How can we create categories for our time. Fill our calendars with intentional blocks of time dedicated to what we care about. Instead of letting our days be wasted by people who want to constantly steal away our time for pop up meetings and unplanned non-emergent meetings.

Where are you spending your time? How are you keeping track of your time? When you look back on what you have done this last year, month, or week, did you do what is most important to you?

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Smooth Rocks

Whenever I go to any body of water. My favorite rocks are the perfectly smooth ones. They ones with no jagged edges or sharp corners. The ones that are especially good for skipping. The rocks that look like they might be an alien spaceship because they are so smooth and seamless.

My least favorite rocks are the sharp jagged rocks. The pointy ones. The ones that cut at my feet when I walk on them. They are sharp when I pick them up. They are not good for skipping usually. And they look like evil alien spaceship here to destroy us or an astroid on its way to crash into earth.

The biggest difference between these two rocks is sand. The smooth stone was once the rough ugly stone. It was a busted up angular foot killer. I was only with the passage of much water that the foot killer became the perfect skipping stone. There were no shortcuts. There was only a lot of water.

The water flowed over the stone.

Grain by grain, the stone became smooth.

There were no rock gnomes smoothing them one by one.

Only the water.

The persistent water smoothed the stone.

Where are you trying to shortcut the process instead of being patient? Where are the jagged rocks in your life? When are you giving up on the jagged rock instead of celebrating each grain of sand? Who are the smooth stones in your life? Have you told them recently?

Jagged,

–JT

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Resources Ltd.

I was listening to a newer podcast I like and it assesses Apple and their ability to succeed in the face of difficult circumstances. They were assessing numbers and viability and market share and all the products Apple sells.

One of the things they were talking about was how Apple was moving to be more service and subscription based and less product based. In their discussion, they asked a pivotal question about what will people be talking about in twenty years regarding Apple and their sustainability and their success and what made them great. They even asked about Apple’s longevity and whether or not they would still be in business in twenty years and whether or not their current products and services would be necessary.

All of this questioning made me ask and question how a company could still last in twenty years. How could a company sustain itself for so long? What products can we guarantee will be around in twenty years and they are around today?

I came up with a few different products. But only one of those products really hit me in the gut.

Time.

Time is the globally universal product we all have. We spend it. We steal it. We lose. We find it. We try to make it. We never have enough of it. And too often we waste it.

Time is limited and I trade it too easily.

Time is limited and I give it away at the drop of a hat.

What is your time worth? How do you spend your time? In twenty years, do you want to look back and say you spend your time this way? Who can help you stay on track for spending your time better?

Timely,

–JT