Business Module 2
Time management.
Is time Out of Control?
We listen in astonishment to the most severe examples on news broadcasts: stories involving someone
who becomes so outraged over a seemingly trivial event that he assaults and injures or even kills
another person. Road rage is one of the most common manifestations of this disorder, but there are
many others and can involve almost any human activity. All that’s required are two or more people, a
spark, and a participant who takes the whole thing way too seriously. And it appears that these
ingredients are available and come into contact with each other with surprising frequency.
These are extreme manifestations of what is typically referred to as “hurry sickness,” a state of anxiety
caused by the feeling of not having enough time in the day to accomplish everything that is required.
Some people are so intent upon achieving their goals, that any disruption, even the ordinary, everyday
kind, can send them into a homicidal, unthinking rage. We wonder how these people can lose control so
quickly and completely, and are com- forted knowing that we are more rational, more balanced, and
better adjusted. We are unaffected by minor interruptions, and are in complete control of our emotions
and actions.
Are we, really? While most of us, thankfully, are not prepared to commit mayhem when things don’t go
our way, many of us have a serious problem dealing with events that knock us off course, interfering
with our goals. We are a nation of overachievers, with lives stuck on fast forward. With little time to
plan, many of us have become adept at crisis management, rushing to put out one fire after another.
We’re all dependent on overnight delivery and communicating via e-mail, fax, and telephone. We’re
constantly.
connected by personal digital assistants and Black Berries, and we time our commitments to the minute
so that we can fit them into our crowded schedules.
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get
somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
—Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English author,
Through the Looking Glass
Here’s a simple test to see if you’re suffering from hurry sick- ness. All you need is a partner to keep
track of time while you estimate how long it takes for one minute to elapse. Sit down and get
comfortable. No fair peeking at a watch, or counting off “One Mississippi, two Mississippi. . ..” To start
the test, your partner says, “Go.” When you think a minute has passed, you say “time’s up!”
Go ahead and try it.
,How far did you get? Did you underestimate the amount of time you had waited? If so, you’re in the
majority. In monitored tests, most folks called out “time’s up!” after only about fifteen seconds. At least
one subject thought the minute was up after just seven seconds. Very few made it a whole minute.
If we were as bad at estimating space as we seem to be at estimating time, we’d be crashing into each
other all the time.
Here’s another test. Just sit still and do nothing for one minute, sixty seconds, while your partner times
you. How long does that minute of enforced inactivity seem to you? Are you uncomfortable with just
one minute of stillness?
A minute has become an eternity. Now we measure time in nanoseconds, one billionth of a second.
Super computers perform operations measured in “teraflops” or trillions of calculations per second.
One more test. It takes a little longer than the one-minute drill, but it isn’t difficult, and it doesn’t require
a partner. Simply leave
your watch at home when you go about your business tomorrow. At the end of the day, reflect on these
two questions.
1. Did you find yourself checking your wrist even when you didn’t want or need to know what time it
was?
2. Even without your watch, did you have any trouble keep- ing track of time?
If you answered “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second, you’re again in the majority. Most of
us have become accustomed to tracking time in ever smaller increments as we drive ourselves from task
to task, deadline to deadline, appointment to appointment. We even schedule the fun stuff. This
constant checking has become habitual, so we don’t even realize how time-driven we’ve become.
In our culture the trick is to avoid knowing what time it is. Reminders are everywhere. Clocks leer down
at us from office walls, and watches bob on the wrists of almost everyone we meet. The fellow on the
radio chirps out the time constantly, in artless variations. (“It’s seven sixteen, sixteen minutes after the
hour of seven o’clock, forty-four minutes before eight. . . .”) Our computers flash the time at us when we
log in and keep track of every passing minute while we work. Neon signs blink the time and temperature
at us as we drive to our next appointment.
Pause for just a moment to consider this: at one time there were no clocks and no watches. When the
first public clock was erected in a village in England, folks flocked to the town square to view the
wonder. And it only had one hand! You could tell time only to the nearest hour.
Can we even imagine life without the timekeepers? Probably not. We’re not just aware of time, we’re
driven by time, besotted with time, engulfed in time.
Riding the adrenaline high
Here’s another simple test to diagnose a possible case of hurry sickness. Just respond “yes” or “no” to
the following statement: “I work better under pressure.”
, A lot of us seem to think so. We claim the trait on our resumes (along with “highly motivated self-
starter”), and we brag about our ability to perform under the tightest of deadlines.
Some of us pick up this habit in college, waiting to write that term paper until the day before it’s due,
pulling an all-nighter, and going to class bleary eyed, bedraggled, but smugly self-satisfied that another
challenge has been successfully met. Knowing how clever we are, we carry over the habit to other areas
of our lives and press forward confident and hopeful that others will recognize our talents as well.
You, too? Go back and look at that work after you’ve calmed down. Your best? If you’re honest with
yourself, you’ll admit that the quality of the work suffers when you race through it.
And you suffer, too. You’ve got motion sickness—not the kind that causes queasiness when you react to
the rolling of a ship, but rather a physical and psychological dependence on motion and speed that can
become almost as powerful as a true addiction.
“Leisure time” has become an oxymoron. We experience one long workday, broken but not relieved by
gulped meals and troubled sleep. Only the models in the clothing catalogs seem to have time to lounge.
Americans take shorter and fewer vacations, and we take our work with us, with our beepers and cell
phones, faxes and e- mail. Our home computers are extensions of the office, but being able to work at
home means that we’re always at work.
Leisure is not as leisurely as it once was, and we race through life checking the “fun” items off the to-do
list. Even our play has become purposeful with physical conditioning or enforced “relaxation,” and
competitive pastimes (who plays golf without keeping score?). Even birdwatching has become a
competitive sport.
Simple sickness and scary consequences of hurry sickness
How about you? Have you got a case of hurry sickness?
Symptoms include:
• nervousness
• depression
• fatigue
• appetite swings
• compulsive behavior (repetitive actions that are difficult or even impossible to stop)
• unwillingness and even inability to stop working
• inability to relax even when you do stop working
That’s not good, but it’s not lethal. Hold on. It gets worse. We all have to run the occasional
sprint, meet the unyielding deadline, cope with the unforeseen emergency. And we can do so
effectively and without long-term damage. It can even be exhilarating.
Time management.
Is time Out of Control?
We listen in astonishment to the most severe examples on news broadcasts: stories involving someone
who becomes so outraged over a seemingly trivial event that he assaults and injures or even kills
another person. Road rage is one of the most common manifestations of this disorder, but there are
many others and can involve almost any human activity. All that’s required are two or more people, a
spark, and a participant who takes the whole thing way too seriously. And it appears that these
ingredients are available and come into contact with each other with surprising frequency.
These are extreme manifestations of what is typically referred to as “hurry sickness,” a state of anxiety
caused by the feeling of not having enough time in the day to accomplish everything that is required.
Some people are so intent upon achieving their goals, that any disruption, even the ordinary, everyday
kind, can send them into a homicidal, unthinking rage. We wonder how these people can lose control so
quickly and completely, and are com- forted knowing that we are more rational, more balanced, and
better adjusted. We are unaffected by minor interruptions, and are in complete control of our emotions
and actions.
Are we, really? While most of us, thankfully, are not prepared to commit mayhem when things don’t go
our way, many of us have a serious problem dealing with events that knock us off course, interfering
with our goals. We are a nation of overachievers, with lives stuck on fast forward. With little time to
plan, many of us have become adept at crisis management, rushing to put out one fire after another.
We’re all dependent on overnight delivery and communicating via e-mail, fax, and telephone. We’re
constantly.
connected by personal digital assistants and Black Berries, and we time our commitments to the minute
so that we can fit them into our crowded schedules.
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get
somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
—Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English author,
Through the Looking Glass
Here’s a simple test to see if you’re suffering from hurry sick- ness. All you need is a partner to keep
track of time while you estimate how long it takes for one minute to elapse. Sit down and get
comfortable. No fair peeking at a watch, or counting off “One Mississippi, two Mississippi. . ..” To start
the test, your partner says, “Go.” When you think a minute has passed, you say “time’s up!”
Go ahead and try it.
,How far did you get? Did you underestimate the amount of time you had waited? If so, you’re in the
majority. In monitored tests, most folks called out “time’s up!” after only about fifteen seconds. At least
one subject thought the minute was up after just seven seconds. Very few made it a whole minute.
If we were as bad at estimating space as we seem to be at estimating time, we’d be crashing into each
other all the time.
Here’s another test. Just sit still and do nothing for one minute, sixty seconds, while your partner times
you. How long does that minute of enforced inactivity seem to you? Are you uncomfortable with just
one minute of stillness?
A minute has become an eternity. Now we measure time in nanoseconds, one billionth of a second.
Super computers perform operations measured in “teraflops” or trillions of calculations per second.
One more test. It takes a little longer than the one-minute drill, but it isn’t difficult, and it doesn’t require
a partner. Simply leave
your watch at home when you go about your business tomorrow. At the end of the day, reflect on these
two questions.
1. Did you find yourself checking your wrist even when you didn’t want or need to know what time it
was?
2. Even without your watch, did you have any trouble keep- ing track of time?
If you answered “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second, you’re again in the majority. Most of
us have become accustomed to tracking time in ever smaller increments as we drive ourselves from task
to task, deadline to deadline, appointment to appointment. We even schedule the fun stuff. This
constant checking has become habitual, so we don’t even realize how time-driven we’ve become.
In our culture the trick is to avoid knowing what time it is. Reminders are everywhere. Clocks leer down
at us from office walls, and watches bob on the wrists of almost everyone we meet. The fellow on the
radio chirps out the time constantly, in artless variations. (“It’s seven sixteen, sixteen minutes after the
hour of seven o’clock, forty-four minutes before eight. . . .”) Our computers flash the time at us when we
log in and keep track of every passing minute while we work. Neon signs blink the time and temperature
at us as we drive to our next appointment.
Pause for just a moment to consider this: at one time there were no clocks and no watches. When the
first public clock was erected in a village in England, folks flocked to the town square to view the
wonder. And it only had one hand! You could tell time only to the nearest hour.
Can we even imagine life without the timekeepers? Probably not. We’re not just aware of time, we’re
driven by time, besotted with time, engulfed in time.
Riding the adrenaline high
Here’s another simple test to diagnose a possible case of hurry sickness. Just respond “yes” or “no” to
the following statement: “I work better under pressure.”
, A lot of us seem to think so. We claim the trait on our resumes (along with “highly motivated self-
starter”), and we brag about our ability to perform under the tightest of deadlines.
Some of us pick up this habit in college, waiting to write that term paper until the day before it’s due,
pulling an all-nighter, and going to class bleary eyed, bedraggled, but smugly self-satisfied that another
challenge has been successfully met. Knowing how clever we are, we carry over the habit to other areas
of our lives and press forward confident and hopeful that others will recognize our talents as well.
You, too? Go back and look at that work after you’ve calmed down. Your best? If you’re honest with
yourself, you’ll admit that the quality of the work suffers when you race through it.
And you suffer, too. You’ve got motion sickness—not the kind that causes queasiness when you react to
the rolling of a ship, but rather a physical and psychological dependence on motion and speed that can
become almost as powerful as a true addiction.
“Leisure time” has become an oxymoron. We experience one long workday, broken but not relieved by
gulped meals and troubled sleep. Only the models in the clothing catalogs seem to have time to lounge.
Americans take shorter and fewer vacations, and we take our work with us, with our beepers and cell
phones, faxes and e- mail. Our home computers are extensions of the office, but being able to work at
home means that we’re always at work.
Leisure is not as leisurely as it once was, and we race through life checking the “fun” items off the to-do
list. Even our play has become purposeful with physical conditioning or enforced “relaxation,” and
competitive pastimes (who plays golf without keeping score?). Even birdwatching has become a
competitive sport.
Simple sickness and scary consequences of hurry sickness
How about you? Have you got a case of hurry sickness?
Symptoms include:
• nervousness
• depression
• fatigue
• appetite swings
• compulsive behavior (repetitive actions that are difficult or even impossible to stop)
• unwillingness and even inability to stop working
• inability to relax even when you do stop working
That’s not good, but it’s not lethal. Hold on. It gets worse. We all have to run the occasional
sprint, meet the unyielding deadline, cope with the unforeseen emergency. And we can do so
effectively and without long-term damage. It can even be exhilarating.
