Pam Slim offers up this advice for entrepreneurs, though I think we should all honor it since we are all working on something of real value – be ruthless with your time. There are people who will be careless with it; there are people who think they own it because you work for them; there are people who don’t respect their own talents, gifts, and time, and therefore it never occurs to them to respect those of others. You have to guard your energy, and your energy is carried on the rails of time.
Free time is a misnomer. Time is never, ever free. There is always a trade-off. Even if you are the most supreme multi-tasker on the planet, there is a limit to how much you can do in any one moment, and you never get a single moment back. It’s spent and gone, and your time is finite. We won’t go on forever.
Life is generous, but it’s not that generous.
Forget would, should, and could when it comes to your time. The only verb that time understands is “do”. And what you do is always up to you. Be ruthless with your time. Take it very seriously, and do something so valuable with it that it will be worth remembering when it’s gone.
Christa Avampato 