Time

Earlier this week I tweeted that time is the most valuable commodity.  Everyone has heard of disposable income, we should think about disposable time.  We all have a certain amount of 'overhead' that can only be reduced by so much.  Some amount of time has to be set aside for sleep, eating, work, etc.  These are the type things that have to happen in real time, you can't save up 20 hours of sleep at once to use over 3 days, just doesn't work.  Other overhead can be budgeted a bit, stuff like cutting the grass, washing the car, etc.  And even farther down the list are things that you know need to get done, but don't really have a set schedule.  Stuff like fixing the stuck window, or getting new tires on your car.


All that 'stuff' above doesn't really define who we are.  Everyone has 'stuff' that has to be done.  I think what defines us is what we do with the balance of the time we have.  This is the time you can spend riding a bike, spending time with the family, reading a book, watching TV, or learning how to speak Dutch.  It's interesting to think about how to prioritize spending this time.  Look at it like currency, you've got a finite amount of available currency, how are you going to spend it?


I'm going down this rabbit hole because of an interview I heard this week with a photographer that survived a 12m fall (probably should have killed him), all the media coverage of Steve Jobs passing in the last couple of weeks, and where I am in my fundraising project with the Chain Gang.  Of all the quotes and soundbites about Jobs, the one that stuck in my head was this, which was from an interview done about 6 or 7 years ago, after he was first diagnosed; paraphrased...  


"At the beginning of every day, I think to myself, what am I going to do today and would I do that if this was my last day alive?  If you answer 'no' too many days in a row, it's probably time to do something different."


Now, this isn't some panacea for life, just something to think about.  I've got a lot of things that I'd 'like' to do, work on the honey do list, race CX, cultivate potential coaching work, play with photography more, and write blog posts.  But... I also have commitments that I've made, like coaching for TNT and raising money for RAAM.  


That means I've got to push the fundraising up from the middle of the consciousness to the top; always there, always moving forward.  Every minute that passes, is gone.  Time to start being more diligent about how they are used.