TIME IS A PARADOX

Few of us today still read Voltaire, the great French writer and philosopher. We would, however, agree with Voltaire's assertion that nothing is shorter than time. Most of us never seem to have enough of it.

Time is an elusive sunbeam, an evaporating raindrop, a wilted dandelion on a windy day. We cannot, physically, catch it; nor can we harness it and make it our own. Time management is an illusion, because no one can really manage time. Time, simply is constant. It is a measurement of intervals. It moves at the same rate regardless of who we are or what we are trying to accomplish. It respects no one. No one can convert, change or otherwise mitigate time. Despite this, we continue to use the phrase, "manage time" to identify our efforts to use our allotted moments meaningfully.

Managing time really refers to managing ourselves in such a way as to optimize the time we have. It means conducting our affairs within the time available so that we achieve gratifying results. Many people operate under the mistaken belief that they really do have enough time for everything, if only they could organize their hours more efficiently. The result is often an attempt to work faster at their tasks. They try to "hurry up." They reason that if they can just go fast enough, they can get ahead of all their activities and actually have time left over.

Of course, this never works. As a strategy for using time, it offers very little. To be sure, there are occasions when working faster makes sense. This is especially true if people have approached their daily, routine tasks slowly or at a lazy place. In this case, when people are actually taking more time than necessary, working faster can be valuable.

But, most often, working faster produces problems. Under "hurry up" conditions, people make more mistakes. They have even less time to think, plan , and reflect before taking action on problems. The day begin to appear frenzied.

If both "work faster" and "work longer" are poor strategies for managing time, why do people use them so often? The best answer seems to be that people believe these approaches will enable them to accomplish all the things that seem to need doing. They fail to realize that, no matter how much they do, there is always more to be done. They doom themselves to a life of frustration, disillusionment, and disappointment. They simply cannot do everything. They must make choices. They must make those tough priority decisions and have the courage to follow the decisions with actions. They must learn to ignore the low priorities.

Time is a paradox. We never seem to have enough time, yet we have all the time there is. No matter how much we do, there are always endless alternatives for spending time. The solution to the paradox of time, then is to focus on the most important things first, realizing that there is always enough time for the really essential matters.