Haste Makes Waste
I spent several hours attempting to clean up the wreckage of a social faux pas on Facebook this week. No need for details, but the main complaint was that I had jumped to (and shared) conclusions before taking time to get all the facts. It wasn't work or book related, but it did illustrate to me how quickly these things spin out of control.
In the rush to get tax documents done early, I tried to add up my taxable interest myself (which is perfectly ok), but I didn't read carefully and ended up about $20 off. This isn't unfixable and won't make a huge difference on the return, but it does mean I'll have to spend some time filling out a 1040X and may have to sacrafice a stamp, since I don't think the Free File extends to X forms.
Yesterday, I realized I need to get some promotional materials out to the Gallatin library that day for our author talk on the February 18th. I spent three hours designing, printing, and cutting out over 100 bookmarks, delivered most of them to the Gallatin Library (which is BEAUTIFUL). To make the trip more efficient we headed over to Vol State, at which point we realized all the book marks had JAN instead of FEB on them. The awesome people at the library helped us out, but it still meant buying whiteout and red pens from the campus bookstore and an extra hour spent fixing each one by hand.
I think of the 5000 things on my to do list, and these make me sigh. No we can't be prefectly efficient machines. But with a little more patience and care, I would have saved a lot of time and energy.
Time is a very important factor in personal finance. We've heard "Time is Money", and there's a degree of truth to that. We get paid, not just for our knowledge and skill but, for our time. Interest is accrued over time. Deadlines, windows, office hours....
Sometimes all these demands leave us with the not unreasonable idea that we should squeeze all we can out of every minute. Multi-task, focus, hurry from here to there, snag some overtime, get it done, done, done. But even good ideas can be taken overboard. When we start going too fast and squeezing too much in, this hyper activity backfires. We need to pad our tasks with time, the same way we encourage you to pad your budget. If it should take an hour, give yourself an hour and a half.
Life, particularly a harmonious life, is a balancing act. The times where I feel I have the best handle on managing my time is when moving through all the "to do"s of the day feels like a dance rather than a race.
In the rush to get tax documents done early, I tried to add up my taxable interest myself (which is perfectly ok), but I didn't read carefully and ended up about $20 off. This isn't unfixable and won't make a huge difference on the return, but it does mean I'll have to spend some time filling out a 1040X and may have to sacrafice a stamp, since I don't think the Free File extends to X forms.
Yesterday, I realized I need to get some promotional materials out to the Gallatin library that day for our author talk on the February 18th. I spent three hours designing, printing, and cutting out over 100 bookmarks, delivered most of them to the Gallatin Library (which is BEAUTIFUL). To make the trip more efficient we headed over to Vol State, at which point we realized all the book marks had JAN instead of FEB on them. The awesome people at the library helped us out, but it still meant buying whiteout and red pens from the campus bookstore and an extra hour spent fixing each one by hand.
I think of the 5000 things on my to do list, and these make me sigh. No we can't be prefectly efficient machines. But with a little more patience and care, I would have saved a lot of time and energy.
Time is a very important factor in personal finance. We've heard "Time is Money", and there's a degree of truth to that. We get paid, not just for our knowledge and skill but, for our time. Interest is accrued over time. Deadlines, windows, office hours....
Sometimes all these demands leave us with the not unreasonable idea that we should squeeze all we can out of every minute. Multi-task, focus, hurry from here to there, snag some overtime, get it done, done, done. But even good ideas can be taken overboard. When we start going too fast and squeezing too much in, this hyper activity backfires. We need to pad our tasks with time, the same way we encourage you to pad your budget. If it should take an hour, give yourself an hour and a half.
Life, particularly a harmonious life, is a balancing act. The times where I feel I have the best handle on managing my time is when moving through all the "to do"s of the day feels like a dance rather than a race.
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