Time—Rich and Poor.

I was talking with a precious friend the other day.  She was struggling with time.  She is in the proverbial sandwich stage of life—caring for an aging parent, parenting her children, and providing care for her youngest grandchild.  You don’t have to add that she has a flourishing home business to imagine why she would struggle with time.  There is never enough.

As I listened, I felt like she’d been peeking into my home and brain. She kept saying the same things I’d been thinking for weeks. We both felt drained and in desperate need of a break that we couldn’t see coming. We needed more hours in the day…and the night. At the same time, she (and I) confessed in frustration over frittered time.  We would realize only after the fact that we had wasted a whole uninterrupted 30 minutes on garbage.

Then, like a flash of lightning illuminating the landscape (that’s a line from a play I did in Junior High that I can’t forget), this allegorical vision came to me. Rich people and poor people spend money differently. There are things one group would not likely purchase that the other would.  Poor people won’t buy a top-of-the-line vehicle. Rich people are not going to buy lottery tickets. Rich people invest in things that would grow their wealth. And the kicker is that the junk poor people purchase wastes what little money they have, actually perpetuating their deficits.

In the same way, a time-rich person might commit to large blocks of time to accomplish a task. They are also free to luxuriate in lengthy leisure activities.  Time-poor people can’t imagine pampering themselves or lingering over coffee with a friend. 

I am in a time-poor season.  I stay up late to talk with that precious friend once a week.  She is important to me.  But I cannot talk with her during the day. I am constantly interrupted and can’t finish a thought during the day. I get so frustrated because I don’t have time to sit, to think, or to finish anything!

But!  Here’s the rub.  I spend my time the way a poor person might spend money.  On those gumball machine toys and lottery tickets.  I buy trash with my time.  I get on social media.  When I realize that I just scrolled for 45 minutes, I am astonished and chagrinned. How did that happen?  I know I get on because there is no commitment.  I can spend 2 minutes checking notifications.  I can stop in an instant when a new demand comes collecting. It feels ‘safer’ than trying to read a book or start a project. But what a waste!

This realization was profound for me.  I told anyone who would listen. I didn’t know quite what to do with it, but I was convinced that the way I spent my time was robbing myself.  I needed to think like a rich person and make wiser purchases that focused on quality even when I can’t have quantity. I needed to invest rather than indulge in trash.

I haven't figured out how to do this exactly, but I am working diligently to cut waste and to treat my time as something I have control over and must steward wisely.

Are you time-rich or time-poor right now? Does the season affect how you spend time? Does this analogy ring true for you?