You may recall Captain Kirk asking Scotty to beam him up. I could really use that transporting process they used on Star Trek: stand still, electrons disassembled and then reassembled to the destination, and you are ready to explore new worlds.
But sometimes I schedule myself and one little thing occurs to disrupt those electrons and there’s near-mayhem. Not full onset mayhem, just partial.
It happened yesterday, twice. I set aside time to host a noon conference call with a new potential client. His car troubles made for an unraveling of the scheduled 4-party call. OK, I get it, sh*t happens. And I felt badly for him, trapped on the side of a country road awaiting assistance. And for the others too. Not his fault; we called off the conference call, rescheduling for another time. He was appropriately apologetic.
In this case, a hole appeared in my schedule: “found time”–like discovering a $20 bill in your pocket–what do you do? Spend it now or re-pocket it for another time? In this case, I recycled the time and wrote more in my new book.
Loss or gain? Half full or half empty? Some of both, I believe.
Later, in the evening, in our 90-minute LinkedIn coaching session to go over the assignments, I hear the client say he has not done his homework. There’s nothing to show me to critique and spend the allocated 45 minutes’ time with him to go over it. So I pushed on and taught new material, as I would have normally after the homework review. I added more homework to keep to my curriculum schedule, and believe he will come around with all of it. Session over in half the time.
Loss or gain? Half full or half empty? Some of both, I believe.
The point of this double-anecdotal post? Use “found time” or find the time to be productive on LinkedIn (or another endeavor) even in unexpected circumstances:
- tweak your LinkedIn profile, and/or
- share an article with a colleague to two or three, and/or
- start that LinkedIn essay that you know you need to write, but invest the time.
The time in the first instance allowed me to get over a hurdle in the book that I had been wrestling with. I passed through it and am now back on track. Value added to me. In the second instance I finished the workday a bit earlier than expected. The evening was mine for a much-needed walk by the beach!
No matter which situation, time is a figment of the mind, so beam those mental electrons along to the next creative (or LinkedIn) undertaking that you now have time to accomplish. Or know it’s time to retrench for the day.
