Having Too Much Time

April 26th, 2010 by Kevin Ngo

We have all heard how time is more valuable than money, but is it possible to have too much time? In terms of living life itself, probably not, but in terms of productivity, then I would say, yes. When you don’t have enough time, you will often get more things done than if you had more time than you needed.

I remember back in high school when most of my day was spent at school since I also played a team sport. By the time I got home, I only had a few hours to do my homework and study so it made me buckle down and get to work right away. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, so even when I didn’t feel like studying, I still got myself to do what I needed to do.

Now when I got into college, things changed. I suddenly found myself out of class before noon time. By the time I got home, the sun was still out, lunch had barely passed, and I had the whole day to do whatever I wanted. Naturally, because of all this extra time, there was no sense of urgency to do my school work right away. I just told myself that it will only take a couple of hours and since I have so much time, I could just do it later.

At first, this wasn’t a problem. When it came down to it, I got my studying down by the time I went to bed. The problem was that I was making this action of waiting until later become a habit, and once that happened, I just kept pushing my studying further and further back in my day until I got to the point where I was staying up really late at night to get my work done. Do this for a few weeks and your energy level will just go down the drain.

Has this ever happened to you in the past? Do you normally get more things done during the weekday or the weekend? I got to thinking about this some time back when I found out a former co-worker of mine at a job I once had was making a lot of money running a side business. Since the job we were doing at the time was tedious and boring, I asked him why he just didn’t do his side business full-time. What he said made me realize why I was able to get so much done back in my high school days.

He said the reason why he still has the job is to force him to take the necessary actions for his side business. Without the job, he would simply have too much time on his hands and would just do what I did back in college, push everything back. He was making 3 times more money on the side business than at his job, but he said that if he quit the job, he would lose his drive.

So do you have too much time? If you find yourself procrastinating on things you know you should be doing, try filling up your time with other work so that when the time comes to take action, you won’t have time to put it off. This is why there is a saying about how if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.

Until next time…

Love Life. Do Good. Live Well.

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11 Comments

  1. gourab April 28, 2010
    • Kevin Ngo April 28, 2010
  2. Anon April 30, 2010
    • Kevin Ngo June 8, 2010
  3. lynn December 9, 2010
  4. Steven Clarke December 15, 2010
    • Kevin Ngo December 15, 2010
  5. Derek G. January 22, 2011
    • Kevin Ngo January 22, 2011
      • Derek G February 2, 2011
        • Kevin Ngo February 2, 2011

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