What is time really worth?
As a working father, I am often found pondering what the value of my time really is. All too frequently I hear myself saying, “There never seems to be enough time” as if somehow there were really less of it now than there once was. When my kids were little, my wife and I used to occasionally ask each other what we did with all our time before the kids were born.
Indeed, we all know that time is the only real constant in our lives, and it's everything else that is variable. With family and work come so many things that demand our time and attention, so many tasks and activities we try to stuff into the time available that the time itself starts to look pretty inadequate. The end result is exhausted people who feel they have been abandoned by time to struggle through an endless to-do list.
Many things now compete with my kids and job for my attention. Cell phones, texting, Facebook and Twitter mean I am never alone or never isolated from the world. There's no time to gather my thoughts. In all honesty, I find myself at times dreaming of a quiet room with a desk where I can sit, all alone with a stack of plain white paper and a nice ink pen and just write. No TV in the background, no text messages or Facebook messages to interfere with my time. The world has brought us so many new ways to stay connected, but it hasn’t yet found many good ways to let us disconnect.
At Mamalode we are all too aware of this as many of our stories mirror the issues we all face as parents with busy work schedules. A week doesn't pass when there isn't a conversation in our office about how to make more use of time, and how to make sure there's time for everyone to disconnect from work and the larger world so they can connect with kids and spouses, go for a hike or a run. We value balance in our lives, and that means we know well how incredibly hard that balance is to accomplish.
Sometimes, I just want to find a way to take care of a few basic tasks without having to carve extra time out of my schedule. Equally, I want the ability to deal with tasks when it suits me, be that at five in the morning or 11 o’clock at night or on my lunch break, or while waiting for my kids to take the stage in their dance recital. My time. My tasks. Those odd moments squeezed between other things are the closest thing I get to “me time” anymore. That’s when I read the newspaper (on my phone or tablet), read a book, eat a sandwich.
When I ask myself what is my time really worth, I only have to remind myself that I am my time. Without the time, I wouldn't be.
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About the Author
August 2014's theme timing is everything is brought to you by Schedulicity
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