Page 43 - Benjamin Franklin\'s The Way to Wealth: A 52 brilliant ideas interpretation - PDFDrive.com

17 WORLD WIDE TIMEWASTER

‘But dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life
is made of.’ So goes one of the many exhortations to time saving that
pepper The Way to Wealth.

Humankind has come up with all sorts of ways of wasting time.
Bureaucracy, test cricket, bubblewrap—but nothing, nothing, comes close to
the web when it comes to lost hours.

DEFINING IDEA…
I wasted time, and I wasted time, and now doth Time waste me.
~ WILIAM SHAKESPEARE, RICHARD II

One suspects that if Franklin had been forced to face Outlook, Facebook
and Stick Man Cricket (you haven’t tried it?) he would have thrown up his
hands in horror. Hours and hours of our precious lives seem to disappear in
front of screens and keyboards, and often with precious little to show for it.

Some companies have fought back, of course, and Carphone Warehouse
even experimented with banning email altogether. Many companies with the
technical know-how to implement it have introduced proxy servers
delivering a choice selection of Internet Lite rather than give their staff
direct access to the distractions of the real deal. Neither of these solutions,
however, tends to suit the self-employed person or small-business owner.

Well, there is always self-discipline; impose a single half-hour slot to deal
with email at the beginning and end of the working day, and only allow
yourself a general surfing break at lunchtime. The problem is that self-
discipline tends to be up there with common sense as one of those things
that it’s much easier to preach about than to put into practice. Or you could
always ignore the problem and go quietly into denial as your life slips
gently down the digital drain, sucked away by hours of sifting emails,
replying to social networking queries and playing pointless online games
(did I mention Stick Man Cricket?).