There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.

There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time. – Napoleon Bonaparte

Who is stealing your time?

What does that mean?
Time, the most precious of all things to mankind. There is no replacing it, no getting it back. Once it is gone, your choices are to make the best of what is left, or lose even more time thinking about what might have been, if only you had that time back. That’s not very helpful, is it?

He states, quite interestingly, that the law gives us recourse to anyone who steals anything of ours, except those who steal our time. I found that a very interesting distinction. I don’t know if we can prove ownership of our own time or not, but it would certainly make phone calls from salespeople much more interesting.

Why is time important?
Everyone is equal before the present moment. We each get the same number of hours in a day. How we choose to use those hours is up to us. I would imagine that most people waste more of their own time than is wasted by others. There might need to be a caveat for those who are forced to attend meetings all day at work, but for the most part, we’re probably our own worst enemy.

Time only moves in one direction, and we have to make the most of what we have. The other problem with time is we never know when we’re going to run out of it. Life is kind of like the last few minutes of a soccer game, when you know the game will end really soon, but you don’t know exactly when.

Where can I apply this in my life?
How well are you managing your time? How much do you have and how much more do you wish you had? How do you get more? Well the obvious answer is you can’t. You’re going to have to prioritize and trim something elsewhere to make room for other things. It’s just a matter of determining your priorities.

Grab some paper and write down what you did yesterday. Try to account for every single minute of the day, from waking to returning to sleep. If you’re having too much trouble, do it for today and keep the log current. If you can’t remember that much, you might want to put down some guesses for now, and carefully document tomorrow, and then re-run this exercise the next day.

Take a look at your day. Some things can’t be helped, most of us have to eat, do things in the bathroom and drive somewhere. Work is inevitable (for most of us), as are chores and other household duties. If you have kids, you will want to protect that time as well.

What we’re looking for isn’t your personal time or recreational time, but poorly used time. How long did you spend watching TV? If it was quality time with the family (we watch a lot of science based TV at our house), or the big game (you have to have some time to unwind), that’s one thing. If you are watching TV just to kill time, arrest yourself! Just kidding, but that’s what we are looking for.

Also look for things you do inefficiently, that you take longer than necessary doing, or that leads to distractions that waste time. We’re looking to cut some fat. What can you do without? You might want to put question marks next to some activities that rate fairly low on your priority list, the things you’d give up if you had a higher priority.

Keep track of each day, to see how you spend your time. If you can’t measure it, you can’t analyze it, and if you can’t analyze it, how are you going to improve it? Can you tell I’m an engineer? You can probably think of a few things you can cut out even without doing all this work. I probably could do without The Tonight Show, that would save an hour each day! I wonder what else I could do with that time? How about you?

Now that you have a little free time, perhaps you have some projects you have been ready to start (or restart). If you’ve been with me for a while, you probably have scraps of paper all over the place with plans for things to do with your newfound free time.

It’s time to make a decision. Select one project, and make it real by doing one of the items on the list right now. Right now. Do it. I’ll wait, really. Get started and keep after it. And don’t let anyone steal your time, most especially don’t steal your own time!

From: Twitter, @BrightQuote
confirmed at : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/n/napoleonbo139273.html
Photo by Changing World Photography (cropped)