Why is it that some people are always cribbing about lack of time and there are others who seem to have it in abundance? They say people who crib about lack of time are actually disorganized, inefficient, lazy. I thought – shouldn’t it be the other way round? People who have lots of time probably have it because either they have nothing to do or are actually disorganized, inefficient and lazy and are not doing what they’re supposed to be doing!
In fact I went one step ahead – I felt God ought to give the first group MORE time to finish the things they want to do. Like maybe an extra hour every day. Isn’t that a pretty fair thing to expect? Ya, they are the ones who are working hard. And they could do with some extra time. They need it Man! Believe me, I even know what these people need more time for.. I happen to be one of them!
To begin with, I definitely need 10 more minutes to sleep. And I’m always late for meetings – strangely every time by about 15 minutes. And when dinner is served I usually need at least 5 more minutes to finish work and shut down the Laptop. And hey, I forgot – what about the extra 10 minutes I need to finish my game of Sudoku! Thank goodness I remembered that! Now let’s see – that’s forty minutes in my case, but I think an extra hour is pretty reasonable to expect.
And never mind those people who say that nobody has ‘less’ or ‘more’ time and that everyone gets exactly twenty-four hours a day, nothing more, nothing less. I KNOW THAT! That’s exactly why I’m asking for an extra hour.
Guess what? I already discussed this proposal with God. And he told me “Are you nuts? That’ll be an HR nightmare!”. It was impractical, he thought. He said, what about the folks who need, like an extra day every month? And those who need an extra month, every year? They’ll all start making demands too, won’t they? It’ll never stop there either!
So I asked God, if there was an alternate solution. And he said, there is one which a lot of people use. And that is to stop fooling yourself into thinking that you have no time to do something and start accepting that you don’t actually want to do that thing. And then the next step being to DECIDE to not do that thing, rather than crib about not being able to do it. I tried that, the next time I felt the lack of time.
It was my daughter’s birthday. My wife and me were supposed to decorate the house with typical party decoration material for a birthday party that evening. At first I thought – “I need to finish preparing this presentation today; I don’t really have the time to put up all this decoration!” Then I rephrased it. “I want my daughter’s birthday party to be really fun, but I consider finishing my presentation far too important to inconvenience myself by taking a break and putting up the decoration.”
And that really showed me how much I was bullshitting myself. That pause to think, that comparison helped me understand my priorities. And I’m not saying your child’s birthday has to be more important than your work. I think it’s perfectly fine if you choose to spend time doing your official work all day on such an occasion. As long as you’re actually doing the work. And you think it is really important. There’s no golden rule there. You know best what you want to do with your time.
What’s important is to not pretend to be busy, in your mind. And not kid yourself into believing that there is something called a shortage of time. And please don’t say that you don’t have time to pray to God! I’m telling you that’ll really upset HIM!
Just say “I want to pray to God, but I’m choosing to skip the routine because I consider at least a hundred other things (like playing Sudoku) important enough to be done in that time.” Or whatever you think is the reason. I think HE’ll be fine with that.
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