How Much Time Do Have You Left? How Do You Manage It?

How Much Time Do Have You Left? How Do You Manage It?

Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, a deservedly popular book makes the point, “we don’t know how much time we have.” Should we include Groopman’s superb How Doctors Think, and Kalanthi’s excellent, When Breath Becomes Air, we could have an afternoon-long discussion about doctors and the medical processes of living and dying. But I’d like to take another approach from their collected works.

If we think in terms of the time we have left, how do we manage that limited resource? A middle-age person who has lost their job has precious time to make It happen again. If they have children and a spouse to support, their time is even more expensive. A young man recently told me he was confident he could manage all the things on his To-Do List. One of his friends recently discovered he did not.

“Make the most of each day” is good advice that so many goal-obsessed people forget. They honestly believe that they are making the most of their time, their focus, and their energies. With their limited goals however, i.e. getting rich, getting married, being independently employed, they begin to lose the fabric of their life, imagining a whole quilt already made. They exist solely within the goal.

Focus is good. I preach it to my clients, they take it and make it their own. What we should try to include is a Plan B, C, and D. What happens, if? How long do we stay with a goal that appears to ebb and flow in its completion? Should we stick out a 25-year career in a place that makes us so angry we cannot speak of anything else outside the office? I know several people who have. The impact on their physiology must be terrible, hopefully not.

Sometime in the past, a quote wrongly accredited to Buddha (it was Cervantes) stated, “you don’t have as much time as you think” made the social media rounds. It is a wake up to stop worrying about what others think about your plans and dreams. It is about taking action, and building in some peace and love time.

After all, you don’t have as much time as you think.