I Just Don’t Have Time

Midnight Muses I was just sitting here at my computer talking on the phone to a friend when something interesting came on the television. It was a documentary piece on the wonders of today’s technology. It really made me stop and think. The facts were overwhelming in their simplicity and yet spoke to the power of the individual. Take a glance at just a few of these overwhelming facts.

Statistics show that there are more than 350 million active Facebook users on the Internet social site and that number continues to grow rapidly ever day!
The average Facebook user spends at least an hour a day on the site.
The average user uses the Like button 9 times a month and writes 25 comments each month.

There were many more interesting facts about Facebook, but let’s move on.

MySpace has more than 40 billion page views monthly!
MySpace is available in 15 different languages.
Twitter has enjoyed a 1,382% growth rate in the last year!

Now we could talk forever about these three social sitess. Are these sites GOOD or BAD? The obvious answer is YES. You could easily compile a very long list of both pros and cons about each of these three sites. Maybe we’ll do just that in a future column.

Right now I want you to focus on just one aspect. Review the facts above. Put a few of those numbers into a calculator in hopes of determining how many hours a week are spent on those three sites. Now let’s be courageous and consider adding the hours spent on Google, Yahoo!, and eBay. We’ll overlook the dozens of other search engines available today. In addition, we won’t even consider the time we spend on cell phones or watching television.

Your answer will more than likely easily be in the billions of hours per week. My question is this: What were we all doing before we discovered these technologies? What did we stop doing in order to utilize these technologies? This isn’t a criticism in the least. It’s nothing more than an observation and question. The next time you find yourself complaining about not having enough time to do something … look back at these facts and figures. Then review your priorities and realize that you can find time to do anything if it’s something that has to be done or something that you really want to do. Just a pinch of reality here. Gotta go now. I’ve got something I need to google!

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services.