The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

December 8Employing Time

Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.

Louisa May Alcott—Little Women (1868)

Here's the problem with time: it's the only thing we can't make, manage, or control.

We can't speed it up, slow it down, or put it in place for safekeeping. The big bucket of stress in our lives comes from the fact that we are convinced time is something we can direct.

Stop trying to wrestle time to the ground and admit it's not possible.

However …

Time is indeed something we can waste, much like the first few squirts from a tube of toothpaste (or insert your own analogy).

Consider this: the biggest positive gains on any given day usually come from brief spurts of time spent.

If that's so, then what if the goal became managing focus in an attempt to work fewer hours? Wait, what?

What if we worked at getting better at focus management; do what needs to be done most and figure out what doesn't need to be done at all. Maybe this new relationship with focus versus time could allow you to drop the reflex that tells you to sit at a desk from 9 to 5, or worse.

When results achieved versus time spent becomes the main measure of output, you may eventually find you can work 20 or 30 hours a week rather than 60 or 70.

Try this for a while: make your only time-management goal to shrink your workweek, ...