Columnists
Where does the time go?
Is a minute still 60 seconds when life gets busy? Back in 2012, I wrote a column about time. I wondered then whether days, weeks and years somehow start passing faster as we get older. I’m wondering about time again these days.
I pride myself on being pretty good at managing my time. Since 1993 I’ve uses a paper planner by the company Franklin/Covey to help me manage tasks and time. I make lists, I plan ahead and I meet deadlines. Usually, I can juggle quite a few things at once without dropping any balls. But there are patches when it gets harder, and I’m in one of those patches right now. There are competing priorities involving family, vacation, paid work and volunteer work. Nothing on that list is necessarily a problem. In fact, much of it is good. It’s just that everything seems to need attention at the same time.
Maybe that’s the real challenge with time. We all have the same 24 hours, but those hours feel very different depending on what is happening in our lives. In that 2012 column, I wrote about a time management course I once took. That course was the introduction to the Franklin time management planner system. One lesson stayed with me. The very same delay can make us angry one day and relieved the next. The difference isn’t the clock. It’s our circumstances. I’m trying to remember that now.
When I start feeling that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day, Rick is remarkably unconcerned. He reminds me that I always eventually get things under control. Then he adds that before long I’ll probably be complaining that I don’t have enough to do. He’s usually right.
Busy patches come and go. Priorities shift. Deadlines get met. Some things can wait, and some things turn out not to be as important as they seemed at the time. Sometimes the best time management strategy is simply to recognize that this is a busy patch, not a permanent state of affairs. So I’ll keep using my planner, making my lists, doing the next thing that needs doing and reminding myself that there are still 60 seconds in every minute, even when it doesn’t feel like it.
Debbie MacDonald Moynes is Executive Director of The Prince Edward County Community Care for Seniors Association.
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