Time Shop

"Can you give me a second?"

I am on my way to Seattle and at Starbucks at DFW airport for my Green Tea Latte. As I placed order and stepped back, this lady behind me comes up and says "Can you give me a second". Bluetooth has made it impossible to make out whom someone is talking to.

But people coming to a shop to buy a second is not a wierd idea.

Buy time? Exactly. The idea was that you have all 24 hours in a day and its just that you use it accordingly. But even before you had any idea about time, all the 24 hours were used up. You started squeezing in more and more tasks and it has reached a point where you cannot do anything more. We all had 24 hrs to spend on life. And so was life filling up all the 24 hours. When we started working we squeezed in another 8 hours for work. Then came wife. Then kids - one, two and three in my case. We thought we squeezed in share for all of them within the 24 hours. Did we really? And now the blackberry is perfectly overlaying the entire time span with its email and facebook updates.

When this brother complained about being a new employee and a new father, having difficulty in being energetic to play with his baby as he gets back home - I was really shocked. He is succesful. He identified this as a problem. I too had the same situation. Coming back from office, I wanted to lay back. Stay at home. Cup of tea. Rest. In reality, blackberrying. And I thought this is what it is. I never found this as a problem.

Someone said it is about buying time. Time does not exist for you. Before you knew, it was used up. You buy time spending something else. So as your personal life grows and your shareholders grow, you have to buy more time. You have to expense something. Someone calls it priority. Real time is the product of priority and time span. If my priority of talking with you is the same for you, we can spend exactly the same amount of time talking to each other. For kids, talking to dad is probably very high priority. Unless you set the same priority you are not going to satisfy him.

Setting off to Milwaukee, I had so many office priorities to do when I come back. Coming back, I had one task above all others. And that was to set the right prioirties and set the work life balance.

"Can you give me one second?" - at least my kids should not be asking that to me.