Time is precious… or so we’re told. It’s
oddly one of the few aspects of life that people have actually realized are
important. Breathing? Let’s burn these leaves and breathe deeply… I mean, I don’t
inhale. Hydration? Nah, get me a beer, some vodka, a soda, iced tea, or maybe
just skip the drink altogether. I don’t want water, beer has water in it. Food?
Give me the best tasting, fattiest, greasiest thing you have… extra bacon. Or
maybe I’ll go with the salad that *gag*, or give me like twenty toppings for
that salad and a ton of dressing. Sleep? I’m not *yawn* tired… I can keep
going.
But time? We don’t
live forever. We only have so much time to get things done. How much time will
this take? 20 min? I don’t have that much time. Do you have a TL:DR (too long,
didn’t read)? A summary? An Abstract? What’s the elevator pitch? Don’t forget
to document everything (which will never be read until something bad happens,
and then it will be “why didn’t anyone read this?”), but we’ll only cover the
abstracted summary of this elevator pitch. Can we go to the movies mom? Sorry,
I don’t have enough time.
As of 8:30pm
yesterday, my academic “hell-week” is over. Now it’s project time. But what is “hell-week”?
I know enough people use it, or at least understand the meaning. I started
using it in high school to define the week of school near the end of the
year/semester/etc. that everything becomes due for grading. I got the term from
watching some videos about the Navy Seals where, during training, they have a “week
of hell” where everything happens and they’re given little to no time to sleep,
eat, or relieve themselves. It’s not that bad, but when you have between 4 and
(not me, but I know some people) 11 classes, and they all have one or more
assignments due, stereotypically on the same day, you start to test the limits
of human endurance to get everything done.
One interesting
observation is that there are multiple people, all going through the same
classes, all on the same schedule… yet they all have a personal standard for
time management. For me, I needed to write this post, and decided instead to
get food. Is this post that low on the “priority list” that I opted to get food
then write it? Yes. But for someone else, they might put off sleep for two days
in order to finish their own blog post, and any other work they have. In
business, deadlines are made for everything, regardless if needed or not. Going
to have lunch? Start at 12pm and finish by 1pm. I should get this abstract
completed in 15 min, let me setup a calendar entry.
That actually
brings up a different point, planners and non-planners. There are some people,
such as myself, who if you look at their calendar; lunch, travel, work,
personal projects, phone calls, etc. all have a time and place. Now, if you
actually did look at my calendar, you’d say “aha, you have free time here,
here, and…” halt right there. For all the planning I do, I’m bad at determining
how long a task will take. It’s like a gift to determine how long a task will
take. Some people can tell you the exact minute they will finish something,
others will be years off. Due to bad
time prediction, I leave gaps within my schedule so that I can reschedule tasks
without destroying my entire schedule or needing to drastically change plans.
The exact
opposite would be people who, when you open this same calendar, are greeted by “Welcome!
This is your calendar. You can use it to make schedules.” As in, they don’t
plan. I’ve heard stories of people who will decide to go see a movie, then in
the middle of the movie, leave to get dinner because their friends are going to
a local place. Wait, what happened to the movie? “We’ll watch it after we eat.”
They never actually watch the movie, but somehow end up watching some
small-town’s firework display for the town’s fair. I tend to view these
individuals as having more money than the average person, as they always seem
to be out doing something, and never doing something on their own or watching
the movie at home with friends, or possibly inviting the friends over to try
and make something for dinner. Stuff that not only is sustainable, but always
seem to be more fun as they are personal instead of superficial. I tend to
interact with these people by making a calendar entry “Might <event(s)>
with <person(s)>” so I don’t schedule anything important then, as I may
never get back.
In terms of
standards, it is something we will never have coconscious on, so we operate our
own way. In a business, it would practically be de jure, where you are told when
something is due. Often in some top-down manner. Stock holders demand results
before competitor, CEO wants results a week earlier, higher-ups want it a week
before giving it to the CEO, mid-tiers want it a week before that, base-level
bosses want it a month before that. Suddenly, you the worker, need to have a
meeting to plan the schedule for when tasks are due, and it will somehow end up
being “we’re already late, we need to do this double time”.
Time is
precious. I tell people to “make time”, a half-joking, half-serious statement
as I try to squeeze as much into a small block of time as possible. While it
backfires often enough, it has at least given a drive to accomplish more and
look for natural efficiency as opposed to reducing quality in my work. One area
where there is a de-facto method of time management is travel to more than one
location. While mathematics, physics, and problems like the traveling salesmen
problem will prove that it isn’t true, it is considered normal/proper/etc. to
arrange destinations for a trip in order destinations by way of distance from
the prior point. While some now will say it’s to reduce fuel costs, it mainly stems
from people want to reduce travel time. Whoever said travel is about the journey,
not the destination, obviously never traveled anywhere.
Time is widely
viewed as one of the most valuable resources humanity has, but is also one of
the least organized. Even organized systems like time zones, calendars, and
clocks, while “standardized” within their form, are used differently depending
on who is using it and where. Planners and non-planners will work with time in
vastly different ways, and even within each of those sub-groups, they will have
different ways of scheduling tasks. But as it took me much more time then I was
hoping for, I must go and do other work. Time is of the essence.
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