PBWC Online Newsletters
Where to Find Time
The animals in the kingdom get together to complain about the
human beings.
“They take my wool,” bleats the sheep. “And then
I feel cold when the night comes.”
“They take my eggs,” clucks the hen. “I will never
have a brood of chickens.”
“They take my milk,” lows the cow, “without even
bothering to ask.”
Then the snail speaks up. “I have what humans want more than
anything else but they can’t take it from me. I HAVE TIME.”
Stay Conscious of How You Spend Your Time
While the most important factor to having a balanced life is priority
management, the second most important is time management. In many
ways, time is like money. You can invest it, spend it on something
you value, or you can waste it. But unlike money, you can’t
save it for another day. So as you work to have balance in your
life, ask yourself; what have you done with your last few hours?
Did you use them as an investment, doing something you didn’t
particularly enjoy but knowing that a positive payback would result?
Were they spent devoted to one of your Personal Priorities, whether
at home or at work? Or were they depleted thoughtlessly, dribbled
away on some activity that brought neither joy nor peace nor a
sense of accomplishment to your life?
Every day each of us is presented with twenty-four hours. Each
of us chooses how to spend that time. Demands on that time, like
demands on your wallet, always exceed what is available. To create
and maintain balance in your life, you have to divide your time
wisely, so much for your work life, so much for your home life,
so much for rest and renewal. Unfortunately, once you have made
those divisions, other people will ask you to change your mind
and give your time to them instead.
Remind yourself that people who ask you for your time are like
people who beg for money. You don’t hand out your money to
anyone who asks. Yet when someone requests a piece of your time,
are you embarrassed to refuse? Some people presume that your ten
minutes can be theirs for the asking. Tell them they are wrong.
Those ten minutes belong to you and your Priorities.
This page is preserved from the original PBWC website. It is part of News and Newsletters in the PBWC Website Archive 1996–2015.
This page is part of the PBWC website archive.