Playing with time – 2/2

We’ve all got a limited amount of it - time, that is. There seems to be increasing pressure on us to squeeze everything into the time that we have. To work harder, faster and do more.

I work hard, and I play hard. I’ve squeezed more into my time on earth thus far than many other people would have. I had 17 jobs and what seemed like a dozen “careers” before I turned 27. Salesman, professional musician, teacher, painter, entrepreneur, fishing trip and hire operator, fishing nets, just to name a few before I settled into IT sales in the early 80s.

I’m lucky in that I seem to be hard-wired to work, and my body responds well to an active mind that says “go for it”. I’m also equally lucky that I sleep well, so I can get up and “go for it” the next day. As business people, we usually measure the results of our time with how much money we earned . . .

A housewife can’t do this. (Ouch! Isn’t “housewife” such a politically incorrect word now-a-days?) She needs to measure her results by something else, less direct. Same as a counselor, or other social job. I have a friend who is an industrial chaplain. How do you measure his output on a daily basis?

Imagine the conversation between him and his boss: “I worked 8 hours today boss, and well, I think I’ve saved you some money, by helping your staff to get their lives in order, and therefore making your business a better place to work, and therefore increasing your productivity . . . I think - I hope!”

Measuring productivity in a pure business sense is easy when the job requires a result, or an output that can be measured. As a businessman I measure my result at the end of the financial year with the balance sheet. Profit or growth means I got it right. Loss means that I wasted time, or just plain didn’t get it right.

But there’s also more. The staff relationships, the friendships, the general goodwill that is developed in the process of building a business. Having staff able to pay their rent or mortgage, or be able to go home wiser, happier, or more skilled than before is a really good feeling and great use of my time on earth. Having happy customers too is a buzz.

During my time in business I have served thousands of customers in various ways. Usually I’ve done this by selling them something - a piece of equipment, software or website - and I’m pleased that I’ve only fought with about 1% of them, and only another 2% don’t like me for some reason as a result of our business dealings. That still makes far too many court cases and scraps for my liking, but that’s just the nature of a very active life, I guess!

I’m also accountable for my time vertically. We all are actually. The Good Book says that we’ve got some three-score-years-and-ten to do what we gotta do and then we’re held accountable for our use of time. Here’s a pretty sober scripture if you ask me:

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment
Hebrews 9:27

Whew. I really can’t get away from this little phrase as much as I would like to, sometimes.

I learnt a long time ago that my memory was not up to lies, so I deliberately and consciously stopped myself lying. The trouble was I could never remember what I had lied about and it was too embarrassing for me, getting caught all the time. I know it’s not very biblical the reason that I did this - I mean surely you’d think that as a Christian I wouldn’t lie because the Bible said not to, or because it was wrong, but sorry, I gotta be honest about it - it was a carnal motivation!

But the thing about fessing up to something like this little scripture, is that if we’re honest about it, we’ve got to do the right thing all the time. After all we’re going to have to face the music sometime.

So it’s the VICTUS IN AMBITUS way to do the right thing - all the time, so that we’re clean when our time is up.