"It's amazing how fast time seems to slip away when you grow older," Trudy thought to herself as she got up from her diminutive afternoon nap. "You get up in the morning, make plans for the day, and even before you can get to them it seems to be noon already. Either I'm allowing myself too often to get distracted by other things, or I'm just getting slower. Or maybe both!"

She frowned somewhat disturbed as the image of a speeding train revealed itself to her imagination. She could see herself standing beside the train, watching it rushing past. And every compartment that was swooshing by represented an important issue at hand: a paper to be finished; a research to be done; a presentation to be executed; a website to be updated; a
newsletter to be written; a call to be made; a letter to be sent; legal papers to be submitted; the variety was abundant.

But then Trudy's sense of rationality took over and she realized that a passing train hardly ever displayed itself more than once with the same compartments, but a carousel. yeah, that was a different story. "Carousels turn round and round, and you see the same horses with the same loads passing by time and again; at least, until the carousel stops," Trudy contemplated. "And since the carousel horses are on the same plateau, you
can switch from one to another during the same ride. Besides, these horses also bounce up and down, just like the issues in our lives: Today the outlook may be somber, yet tomorrow it might seem much brighter, depending on where you stand. Yes, life is definitely like a carousel."

But what exactly was so frustrating now that the years were adding up? "Well," Trudy thought, "It may be that once you fall off the spinning carousel, you don't dare to jump on it again as swift as you used to, because the speed of today's carousels seems higher than the ones from the good old days, and my good old mind has not managed to accelerate its activities at the same pace, let alone my good old body!"

"So that may be why making a schedule in the morning is so important," Trudy 's inner voice continued its sermon. "And this daily schedule should be made with time, preferably in the joyful company of a cup of coffee, a bowl of fruit, or anything else that gets you going when the day starts. Taking a half hour for scheduling your activities may spare you a lot of frustration at the end of a seemingly unproductive day. Because, you know what? The day may not have really been unproductive after all; just filled with all kinds of unplanned horses on the carousel that needed to be ridden too!"

So, if you take your time to calmly evaluate the tasks for today, like Trudy seems to be planning to from now on, you will produce a list that is not only designed responsibly, but also protects you from the stress of last-minute execution of postponed duties. We, people, just have a tendency to do the nice things first and postpone the not-so-nice ones to the last moment. And the results of procrastinating important issues till they become urgent are known by many of us: gastritis, headache, bad temper, and diminishing motivation.

Steven Covey warns for allowing easy cases to become pressing ones by mentioning the sense of time management and the overall relevance of executing a task when it's important but not yet urgent. The advantage of life's carousel is that the horses keep showing themselves to you with intervals. Don't allow the same horse to appear too many times without being ridden, but even more important: select the horses that you
definitely need to ride first. After all, the carousel may stop anytime now, and wouldn't it be nice to have at least been able to ride the horse you desired most? No?

Burbank, California; May 20, 2003; Joan Marques, MBA, Doctoral Student
(URL: http://www.joanmarques.com)

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About the Author:

Joan Marques, holds an MBA, is a doctoral candidate in Organizational Leadership, and a university instructor in Business and Management in Burbank, California. You may visit her web site at www.joanmarques.com