Timesheets

by Byron Ware

    This week I got mine done early! It seems that they come around every day, but it's just once every week. Usually there is a gentle email reminder, then a more forceful one. I work as a computer networking consultant and instructor. The time I spend working for our customers must be billed. It is vital to the health of our company. In other words, I am accountable for my time to my company by doing my timesheet.

    Isn't it ironic that many of us in our businesses are accountable with our time, but at home it's sometimes a totally different story. Time in front of the newspaper, computer screen, shopping, television... Are we accountable for these? It appears we may not be. But wait a minute, what's that Paul says?

"For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." (2 Cor. 5:10)

    A friend sent me an amazing email from a commencement address from Villanova. The author, Anna Quindlen, has a keen sense on how important time is. Here are parts of an amazing speech.

Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first...I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent...I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh...

    It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kids eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live...

    Well, you can learn all those things, out there, if you get a real life, a full life, a professional life, yes, but another life, too; a life of love and laughs and a connection to other human beings.

    I've seen quotes on the Internet that indicate most children receive as little as 30 minutes of personal attention a day from parents. What about yours? How much time do you spend a day with your spouse? How much of that time is in healthy communication? Are you existing but not really living? The health of all relationships depends on that time. The Apostle Paul reminded us in 2 Corinthians that we are accountable for what we have done with our time. So, maybe it's time you start working on a different kind of timesheet for the year 2000 -- a home timesheet.

    This is your "gentle email reminder."

    You don't want the more forceful one.

    You may as well, you're going to be held accountable for it anyway.

    Who knows, you may even re-discover the color of the azaleas and your kids' eyes!

Posted: 01/20/2000
URL: http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200001/20000120_timesheets.html

(c) 2000 Byron Ware. Used by permission." -->

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