I read this rule on day eight of my return to doing this blog earlier in the summer and promptly quit for two months or so. It was a terrible statement of a rule that did not sit right with me. It was almost as if the author could not formulate the words and the editor made him shove it out the door or “shovel” as the term might fit.

He starts with “Time wounds all deals…” then wraps up with “…keep everyone at the table long enough to reach an agreement.” Its almost as if he is teaching you to wrap up the deal before all the bad stuff can come to light. I was offended and thought back to the stereotypes of Jews that I had heard in my youth.  That and the ruthless wall street wolf connotations.

One of the concepts that I have read about recently is the concept that time is more valuable than money. The premise is that we can always get more money, but we can never get more time. That book is using the concept to predict a future in which business is driven by time above all else including money. One play on this idea is that Ford will pay lots of money to get ads in front of people in commercials in order to sell cars. Another is that people will pay to see a movie called Ford vs. Ferrari. People value their time and want to use it or spend it to align with their interest.

I do not really ever want to see a car commercial again, but sometimes I want to know what the newest Porsche 911 looks like and costs and how it compares to mine. I will buy magazines, go to car dealerships, or even search online. I may never get another 911, but I am interested and spend my time accordingly. I might actually buy a Ford again if we need to replace the Expedition, but I don’t want to know anything about them until that point in time and don’t want to spend time watching commercials about Fords.

In the Bible, God has taught us to live each day to the fullest and the element of time is fundamental to doing so. Therefore, there is an element of making use of each second to do something. On the flip side, when I was a kid, I planned to go to graduate school and that cannot be done in seconds. From the point I first decided on graduate school, it was probably twelve years before I graduated. If I had focused only on one day at a time, I never would have gotten that far. The result is that we need to balance a focus on today with a plan for what lies ahead.

A guide would seem to be to plan for a day, the day before. Plan for a week, before it begins. Plan for a month, at the end of the previous one. Plan for a quarter, a year, three years, five years, ten years, etc. at an appropriate time. We cannot spend every day planning a lifetime, but we need to spend time planning. If we do not have a plan, we cannot be taking advantage of it. If we do not have a plan, we cannot scrap it to do something more urgent, we just live fire to fire to whatever.