Good heavens my fingers are sore. I’ve only been golfing once in my life, and I had never been to a driving range until last night. I don’t know if my hands are just out of shape or if I dove into driving with too much relish, but my fingers are incredibly sore this morning. Not the skin, the joints. My forearms are fairly sore as well, but I’m not noticing that as much as my fingers. But on to more important things, like relativity.
Scientists, experimenting with Einstein’s theory of relativity, have put extremely accurate atomic clocks into space while keeping a matching clock on earth and have found that over time the clocks keep time at different speeds. Apparently every 10,000 years the clocks will be off by one second, although they can start to measure a difference after just one year. But if you’re interested in experiencing relativity for yourself, start a business and you’ll notice within one day that time moves at a completely different speed for entrepreneurs.
You know the feeling of being at work and wondering when the day will finally end? You sit there at 3pm, and it seems like it takes two hours for 4pm to arrive? And then it seems like another eternity until 5pm and you can leave? Well, I have no idea what I’m talking about, because my work day is never like that and I can only assume it’s like that for some people.
When I wake up in the morning I can’t wait to get to work. There’s so much that needs to be done, and I’m eager to do it. Even when work isn’t fun, it’s still fun, because the challenges, depressing moments, and utterly horrible times are still fun in some sort of way. When I’m at work I don’t feel like I’m working, I feel like I’m getting important things done. Every day, all day, even the days when at the end of the day I’m not sure what I did.
Thus it is that I frequently don’t look at the clock until about 1pm when I realize I’m starting to feel hungry and need to use the restroom. Five minutes later I look at the clock again and it’s 2pm. I use the restroom, eat lunch, do a little more work, and it’s 6pm. My wife calls to ask when I’ll be home, and I tell her I’ll be there in a half hour. 10 minutes later I decide I should start packing up to go home and I see that it’s actually 8pm. I start packing up and leave at 9pm.
Did you ever see that old Twilight Zone where the guy gets a stopwatch that stops time? He can click the watch, walk into a bank, walk out with a load of money, and click the watch and time starts again and nobody knows he was there. I keep thinking about how nice that would be. I wouldn’t use it for robbing banks though, I’d use it for getting more work done, taking naps, and maybe working out or something.
I’ve never felt that time goes by so fast as while I’ve been running a business. There are so many days when I come to work with all sorts of plans as to what I’m going to accomplish, and before I know it the day is over and I haven’t gotten to one of them. Case in point, I haven’t blogged for several days despite committing to post at least once per day. The time just disappears. The last seven years since I started my business seem like a mere blip, and all of a sudden I’m 31 thinking “Man, what have I been doing since 1999?”
Here’s some advice for those of you whose lives are boring, slow, meaningless, and otherwise dull. Start a business, and before you know it rather than feeling like you have too much time on your hands you’ll be wondering if you can talk to the government about creating a 36 hour day.
Break away, Josh. Break away.