“What other kind of management is there” one might ask, “besides that of time?”. Our idea of time is bound up with energy expenditure, both in the Newtonian sense and in the vernacular. In the Newtonian sense, the more energy we spend in an interval, the more powerful that event. Powerful events need not be either or explosive, or destructive — that’s just a stereotype. Picture a hydropower generator, its blades turning more slowly than you might expect, but they’re huge, with lots of momentum behind said angular velocity.
In early childhood psychology, a lot of work goes into separating actions (acting out) from having the idea of doing those actions. One may imagine doing something, and yet not do it. Or, more likely, one may imagine doing something and then do it later. Few are the actions that must be done on the spot, right now, although we get those too.
Once a delay is introduced, we get to concepts like “procrastination” and often a lot of moralizing creeps in. One thinks of a positive action, something that would be good to do, like sending a birthday card to one’s grandmother, but then one delays the action, per one’s training, only to decide that “delay” equals the choice to “not do”, and therefore one rolls into “why am I so lazy?” type contemplations, whereas it’s those contemplations that might be the real waste of time.
Instead, when you imagine a good thing to do, a right action, something you actually need to get around to, like getting your car through DMV another year, add it to your queue with gusto, and then think a lot about said queue.
Queuing Theory is a whole branch of operational research, involving such concepts as critical path analysis and prioritization, basically scheduling. Scheduling is a deep topic in computer science. Learn to think like a computer science by managing your own schedule. Extrapolate from your experience locally to think about larger operations happening more globally, such as the construction of electrical power grids. What’s in the queue on that score?
You might be wondering when I’m going to bring in money. Don’t they say “time is money” and isn’t “time management” likewise “money management”. Well sure, we can look at money as a measure of energy and in particular anti-entropic energy expenditures in the form of work, as opposed to anti-work, which is entropic (like bombing and killing). When you get a lot of work done in a short interval, doing more with less, you feel like (a) you’re getting your money’s worth and (b) you’re being powerful, in the sense of efficiently working through your queue of pending actions.
Prompt: An office working running an electrical grid simulator across several screens is surrounded by clocks reminder her to spend her time wisely and to think ahead. Calendars on the walls. Blueprints. Globes and even a Dymaxion map fuller projection.
