I just watched the documentary "Startup.com"....

In the movie "About A Boy", Hugh Grant plays a young "retired" playboy who has never worked. His father wrote a famous song and Grant's character lives off the substancial royalties.

His life consists of doing virtually nothing but watching endless TV, shopping and chasing women. When asked about "what he does", he responds with the truth of "NOTHING."

When asked what he does with his day, his response was something to the effect of dividing it up into half hour units. 30 minute units would be allocated to certain activites such as 2 units for an hour TV program. 3 units for grocery shopping and 1, 2, 3 or 4 units allocated for this, that and the other, etc.

That idea immediatetly struck a chord with me, since I know that I can squander time doing nothing productive and am adopting that concept to improve my effectiveness.

It's so easy to waste time if there's no structure of time to follow. This way, time can be used as "currency" to be literally spent as I see fit. Even doing nothing can be productive in terms of regrouping when 1 or 2 units are "spent".

2 Units at the gym, 2 or 3 units reading, 4 units for a project etc. A unit can be whatever designation you give it (15 minutes to an hour) but 30 minutes each works well for me.

Time is really all we have and spending it wisely results in a sense of fulfillment.

The common term "Killing Time" means just that, so why not designate units that are not wasted or squandered. Sooner or later our time will run out and that's a fact - Jack!

Lawrence

PS - The movie had other interesting lessons throughout about the real value of things in life.

PPS - This post took me 1/3 of a unit.