"No one, on his deathbed, ever expressed regret that he did'nt spend more time in the office"

Radical wisdom at work

Radical wisdom at work

There seems to be a big difference between the passing of time and the way we spend time. In the first case, we are in front of the Inevitable, symbolized by the second hand advancing second by second on the dial of our analog or digital watch. In the second case, we are in the realm of choice: how and what are we going to spend our time on?

Time, this resource apparently democratically distributed in our planetary system since everywhere in the world, a day consists of 24 hours of 60 minutes each! The length of the day can vary according to the seasons or latitudes. And yet, if you count the number of times each day you hear someone say. If you count the number of times you hear someone say "I don't have time", it seems that the distribution is not as democratic as that! On top it all, the more ways we invent to save time, the less time we have! In spite of electronic agendas, reminder beepers, ultra-powerful computers, cell phones, voice mails, emails, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and instant translators, some people find themselves having to work on weekends in order to meet the goals they have set for themselves or that have been set for them!

And what about Life in all this?

As Seneca (- 4 B- 65 AD) said "No one cares to live well but to live long, while all can give themselves the happiness of living well, none of living long".

Instead of being formed by the so-called "Education" we received, we were formatted! By our family, our neighborhood, our elementary school, our gender, our religion, our social category, our secondary and university studies, the color of our skin, racism, prejudices, commonplaces, generalized stupidity...

Thus, for some, bread must be earned by the sweat of our brow, for others, giving birth must continue to be done in pain, for others, we must continue to hate the Jews who killed Jesus, as for the Arabs, between the Sunnis and the others, it will always be the Shiite ...For others still, time is money, the world continues to belong to those who rise to those who get up early, "Another day, another dollar"...Curiously, this valuing of time seems to have become increasingly important, to the point of pushing airplane manufacturers, a few years ago, to invent the Concorde, an airplane whose speed was greater than the speed of sound, which made it possible to arrive in New York before having left Paris! All this for an exorbitant price, obliging those who used it - or their firms - to work a lot to pay the tickets! I even knew people who made the round trip on the same day!

To be in the office longer? Or out of snobbery? There is indeed a Snobbery of the over-busy person, who never has time!!! A form of arrogance of the indispensable person, which the company and nobody can do without! It is wise for all of us to remember that the cemeteries are full of indispensable people!

Radical Wisdom in a crazy world: Ricardo Semler's "Terminal Days"

One day, Ricardo Semler, the inventor of the Industrial Democracy and the Free Enterprise (in Brazil, in the 80's) decided with his wife that Monday and Thursday of each week would be Terminal Days, that is to say two days dedicated to doing what he and she would want to do if they learned that they had a limited amount of time left to live! Take time to live and leave without regrets! A form of universal Wisdom still too little democratically distributed! It is Life that counts! The rest is stories that we have been told and that we tell ourselves! Take a leaf out of Ricardo's radical wisdom! Don't risk regretting not having spent enough time with yourself and with those you love. The memory you leave behind will last forever!

PS: an excellent book to read if you decide to improve your mastery of time : "The Seven-Day Weekend: changing the way Work Works" (2004)

It is not a book on time management. It is turning conventional wisdom on its head and showing infinite possibilities to live a new life based on trust, freedom, creative rules, giving up the illusion of control, taming the EGO and replacing all that by Focus and Freedom at work. It is not a "new" book. It is "eternal Business wisdom". More needed than ever.

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