Like many freelancers, I find myself trying to pack more into a 24-hour day than is humanly possible. It’s not just us lone business people who do this. I know plenty of professional, executives, and full time parents who do the same thing. And what do we do when we simply run out of time? Those of us who are tasky, solution-minded, Type As reach for help, as evidenced by an entire industry that is based on helping us manage our most limited resource: time.
Time Management vs. Weight Loss
The time management industry is like the weight loss industry. (And both of these I would say probably come in behind the Get Rich Quick industry, but that’s for another post.) Everyone knows the real answer to these modern problems. To lose weight you eat less and move more. To manage your time you take on less and concentrate harder on what you do tackle. But the simple things are so very, very difficult to accept.
There’s a whole industry built around our denial. Plenty of products promise to help you manage your time or your weight. Searching Amazon I found these top 10 department results:
For the search term “weight loss”
- Health & Personal Care (14,108)
- Books (74,358)
- DVD (384)
- Sports & Outdoors (1,018)
- Grocery (1,909)
- Kindle Store (882)
- MP3 Downloads (514)
- Everything Else (264)
- Home & Garden (208)
- Music (147)
Total: 93,792 Items
For the search term “time management”
- Books (95,409) – (My favorite, Getting Things Done, has practically spawned a cult of productivity!)
- MP3 Downloads (130)
- DVD (16)
- Kindle Store (513)
- Office Products & Supplies (181)
- Software (127)
- VHS (37)
- Home & Garden (36)
- Apparel & Accessories (26)
- Watches (25)
Total: 96,500 Items
Can you believe that? I honestly expected weight loss to beat out time management by a hearty margin. You know, on account of all those ‘health’ and ‘grocery’ items. However, this little experiment proves my point and one other thing – clearly we need some sort of time management pill!
