When I Have More Time

I’ll do it when I have more time; I’m just too busy right now.

It’s likely that these are some of the most often uttered words in any language, especially from the mouths of small business owners. One of the biggest problems facing any entrepreneur is that there’s always more to do. It always seems like the to-do list expands to consume whatever time is allotted; and then some.

There’s always someone or something screaming for our attention. The inbox is always full. The voicemails won’t stop vibrating your phone. The problems keep on coming. The customers keep pressing. The wheel never stops spinning.

I know I signed up for this but give me a break!

It’s enough to drive someone crazy. Or drive them to drink. Or both.

Time management skills are seemingly in short supply these days. With all our time-saving gadgets and efficiency inducing apps, you’d think we’d have oodles of time to spare. (Never thought I’d be able to work the words gadgets and oodles into the same sentence…) We’ve got calendars and reminders; emails, texts, IM’s, DM’s and tweets; collaboration, automation, digital assistants and remote access. More stuff to make us more efficient than ever before.

Shouldn’t we all be relaxing on a beach somewhere?

But, that’s not how it works, is it? The more stuff we get to help us manage our time, the less of it there seems to be left for us. And it seems like we never get to do that thing we really want to do. That thing, whatever it is, that we know can help us get better, that we know is good for us, that we know we really want.

It may be something that will make our business more efficient, like learning some new program, overhauling our process or finally figuring out how to effectively market on the latest social media channel.

Maybe its finally doing something about our health: revamping our diet, getting off our butts and moving more or getting past some habit that we know is bad for us.

Or maybe it’s just something that we’ve always wanted to do; something that will make us happy and increase our mental health, like finally learning to play the guitar, taking that online course on genealogy or restoring that old car that’s buried in the garage.

Whatever it is, we’ve always got more pressing things to do. Business, family, finances; they all come before what we want. It seems like we never will get around to us.

Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?

Timothy Ferris

But what if we did have some time for ourselves? What if something unexpected happened and, all of a sudden, we had some down time? What would we do then? Would we finally do that thing we’re always putting off? Or would be simply find another excuse to keep us from doing important work?

Well, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not, whether we think it’s real and serious or imagined and overblown, it’s here: that elusive “more time.” We’ve always believed that not having enough time was the reason we never got the chance to do that important thing. That being too busy was keeping us from doing our most important work.

Well it’s here: down time. Time to do that important work.

Now’s our chance.

We’ve got the time.

What are we going to do with it?

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Thanks, Joe