In 49 C.E., Seneca wrote a book on time management. In On the Shortness of Life, he came down hard on his fellow Romans for pursuing political careers they didn’t really care about, holding elaborate banquets they didn’t especially enjoy and baking their bodies in the sun. He scolded them for not realizing that, in succumbing to such diversions, they were squandering the very stuff of existence.
Seneca’s point was not that it is wrong to spend time relaxing at a party or on the beach. Oliver Burkeman states his point: “The distracted person is not really choosing at all. Their attention has been taken by forces that do not have their highest interests at heart.”
Publishers have produced more books on time management than we will ever have time to read. For example:
- Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
- Stephen Covey’s First Things First: A To-Do List for Living
- Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play
- David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
- Jocelyn Glei’s Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind
- Jim Loehr’s The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal
- Arnold Bennett’s How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
- Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.
Lots of writers want to help us create to-do lists, schedules and priorities. The Pomodoro Technique reduces work into chunks of 25 minutes followed by five minutes of rest. The Eisenhower Matrix divides tasks into “urgent and important,” “not urgent but important,” “urgent but not important” and “not urgent and not important.” The rule of 50/30/20 suggests spending 50% of our time on essential tasks, 30% on nonessential tasks and 20% on leisure activities.
We give too much of our time to not nearly enough.
These writers have a point. We do not have enough time to waste time scrolling through social media, multi-tasking as a way of avoiding work or spending more time deciding what to eat than eating. We give too much of our time to not nearly enough.
Brett Younger
We act as if the real part of our life is on the way, but first we have to get past a couple of things, some unfinished business, time to be served, a debt to be paid and a responsibility to take care of. We tell ourselves: Once we finish our list, implement a better system of personal organization and invest a sufficient number of years in honing our craft, then life will begin.
We don’t have enough time for Love Island, dusting our plants or ironing. We don’t have enough time to sit around moping, choosing despair or worrying what people think. We don’t have enough time to complain about those we don’t like, look for revenge or try to change someone’s opinion about us. We don’t have enough time to be bitter over things we can’t change, want to go back to what was or keep doing the same thing. We don’t have enough time to be bored, blend in or sit in the corner while the band is playing.
We wish we had more time. That’s understandable. But we could look at it another way. Why treat the time we have as a small number when we could treat it as a great gift, because it is so much more than if we had never been?
We have to say no to some things that are just OK, so that we can say yes to the best life.
Warren Buffett suggests we make a list of the top 25 things we want out of life and then to arrange them in order. The top five are the ones around which we organize our time. That seems obvious, but then he says, the remaining 20 are not second-tier priorities to which we give our attention when we have the chance. They are the ones that Buffett says we should avoid — because they are the ambitions that are not important enough to form the core of our lives but are seductive enough to distract us from the things that matter more. We have to say no to some things that are just OK, so that we can say yes to the best life.
We have time to listen to the people we love, tell them how much they mean to us and recognize that every day is a special occasion. We have time to do something interesting, have some fun and choose to be happy. We have time to surround ourselves with gracious people, hug our friends and care for someone we have not cared for.
We have time to be courageous, take a chance and live so that when our life flashes before our eyes, we will have plenty to watch.
We have time to embrace the possibilities, try something new and see that every day is an opportunity.
We have time to breathe and think deeply, so that we do not give our heart to what will not fill our heart.
We have time.
Brett Younger serves as senior minister at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N.Y.
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