A while ago, I got an email
from my father-in-law. Let me start by saying that he is a wonderfully sweet
man, who has a great way of giving me advice without it necessarily sounding
like advice.
In response to an earlier
post about my dirty little "mail" secret (read "Putting 2011 On the Shelf" for my
confession), he shared this story from when he was a cardiologist in private practice...
Relevant to your blog, the
problem (not your problem,
but the problem) is that
there are only 168 hours in a week, that is 10,080 minutes. When I was working
60-80 hours per week I learned how to make "concessions to reality"
and was frequently called upon by our office staff to do a procedure or
take care of something that one or two of my inefficient partners could not
complete because they knew I would and could do it. I learned how to work
efficiently and make use of small bites of time. I also do that in our
home where I am CEO of domestic engineering, shipping and packing and use 5-10
minute intervals to accomplish small segments of these mindless, but vital,
chores.
At the time, I didn't pay
much attention to those words. But today, they conspired to change the way I look at time.
