We find ourselves daily, connecting wtih customers on a personal basis as they come into Greenwood Optical. It really helps make it NOT feel like work. We all have moments where we feel like we spend more time in the workplace than anywhere else. When we have a lobby full of patients and we are engaged in conversation, that feeling goes away for me. It becomes an interaction and that workplace drag disappears.

Let’s get technical for a second. There are 168 hours in a week. Out of those 168 hours, on average, I work 38.5 hours. Leaving 129.5 hours. What do we do with out spare time? Well we are “required” 8 hours of sleep a night. (Yea right, we ALL get that much sleep don’t we!?) Take the 129.5 hours of spare time and take away those 56 hours of sleep we get and see where that leaves us…73.5 hours.

Of course this is just an example of my life, all of our schedules differ, but I am starting to ask myself “what am I doing with that 73.5 hours?” 2 hours spent at the movies? 1.5 hours taken to get to the grocery store and back? A lot of my time goes to writing music, catching up on errands, building for the future, taking on extra projects. But why do we find the need to be so busy all the time? Because we want to feel important. We want to feel needed. My new thoughts recently have been, if I wasn’t so busy, I would have more time to give back to my family, my friends and my community. That to me, would make me feel more needed and important than anything else. I find when I only focus on myself, and my self worth, and “what can I do to make people need me” that I am most unhappy. Isolation in our work leaves no room for relaxation and diminishes our human interaction.

I now ask a tough question. What are you doing with that 73.5 hours? View your time as valuable and important. Because it is! Let’s go against the grain of our culture and stop to smell the roses. Stop to spend EXTRA time with our loved ones. We are all in this together, A little bit of Love goes a long way with us humans.  Im off to analyze my 73.5 hours. Have a good day everyone.

 

Nathan