I’ve been obsessed with time ever since I was a little kid and my father gave me his old Timex bullseye watch.
I loved that watch and wore it everywhere!
It displayed “normal hours”, military time and even counted the minutes. It’s hands also glowed in the dark (sort of). I would place it under the lamp at night and then for the next hour, if I squinted and put the watch really close to my face, I could check the time after I went to bed. And it was water resistant – I even wore it swimming!
Back in those pre-digital days in the 1970s, I was the only kid in 1st grade who had mastered telling time.
I started timing everything.
I knew how long it took me to trudge up the hill to school every morning.
I meticulously calculated how many minutes I had left when I went home for lunch.
When my mom said we’d go to the swimming pool “in an hour”, I knew exactly when it was time to start nagging her.
This fascination with time has continued throughout my entire life.
I timed my workouts. My commute. Meetings. Weekly grocery shopping. Dog walks. Movies.
It’s probably not too surprising that I even developed my own time management system for work.
When I replaced my watch with an ever present cell phone, I added stopwatches, alarms and more timers. Now instead of thinking in terms of quarter, half and full hours I became accustomed to tracking time by the minute.
Then one day a few weeks ago, after 45 years of tracking time, I stopped.
Several things led to this:
- I stopped carrying my cell phone everywhere. Leaving my phone in another room meant I didn’t always know what time it was.
- I had a dry spell in my business where I had few activities on my calendar that required advance scheduling.
- After measuring and logging every workout for decades, I asked myself, “Why is this important? What value am I getting from this?”
But by far, the most significant reason was that my wife was diagnosed with a serious and potentially fatal disease.
Suddenly time stopped.
Everything I had previously worried about, planned for or thought about seemed inconsequential.
Including time.
If things go well, my wife has a rough road ahead. If things don’t go well, it will be worse.
Neither of us is looking forward to what is coming.
So instead of focusing on the clock I am trying to focus on what’s most important everyday.
I am trying to be kinder.
I am trying to have patience with my wife, the doctors, even with myself.
I am trying to ignore the petty little things that used to bother me but now seem so meaningless.
I am trying to laugh and smile more.
I am trying to relax and sink deep into every good moment – playing with my cats, hugging my wife, walking the dog, watching the sun come up, exercising hard and listening to the birds.
Right now, I think about time in terms of chunks of the day: morning, early afternoon, late afternoon and evening.
As our schedules fill with doctor’s appointments, procedures and treatments, I will undoubtedly be tracking time more closely in the near future.
But I think my obsession with time may have passed for good.