What to Do with All Your

What to Do with All Your "New" Free Time?

The techniques in this book may save you hours, if not days, each week. If you save a little more than an hour per day, you can get the same amount of work done in a four-day workweek .

So, what will you do with all this free time ?

Please don't squander it. I beg you. When I first started applying time management techniques to my life, I used all the new free time I gained on my then-current addiction: reading more Usenet NetNews. I guess the contemporary equivalent is to spend it reading RSS feeds, blogs, web sites, and such. Many such things are time wasters. Please don't use your new-found free time to pack more time wasters into your life.

I have a better idea.

Use this new-found free time to fight injustice.

The most common injustice that I see every day is the way corporations steal our lives away from our families. We wake up one day to find that our children have grown up hardly knowing us, or that our significant others are leaving because they hardly see us. "How did the time pass so quickly?", we wonder to ourselves.

There used to be the so-called "implied social contract." We work for a company 40 hours a week and in return we are paid enough to live plus a pension to retire on. It was a fair deal. However corporations now expect more and more of our time with no increased benefit to us. Geeks typically work 6070 hours a week only to be laid off en masse due to the bad business decisions of clueless CEOs that are paid hundreds, if not thousands, times our salary. When I was at AT&T/Lucent in the 1990s, we were constantly reminded that we should expect less job security from the company whether or not we did a good job. We were told to praise the shift from guaranteed pensions to "every man for himself" 401(k)s. And yet, in my final years working there, the management was shocked and dismayed to find less loyalty from the employees. Loyalty is a two-way street.

Want to do something radical? Revolutionary? Use the techniques in this book to reassert the 40-hour workweek and reclaim your family life:

• Go home after you've worked 40 hours in a week. Be as loyal to your employer as it is to you. Go home 8 hours after you've arrived each day or after working 40 hours a week.

• Spend more time with your significant other(s). Give him/her a kiss that lasts a full 12 seconds every day (not 12 little kisses; actually count to 12 for one long kiss. You'll be amazed at the difference!). Tell them how much you appreciate them. Schedule date nights. If your PDA has a "random" setting, schedule a random "I love you" call each day (and block out at least 15 minutes so it doesn't feel rushed).

• Spend more time with your kids. If you have children, spend time with them doing something other than watching TV. Not sure what to do? Try asking them. Still not sure? Go where geeks get all their answers: search Google for "free things to do with kids [your town name]". No kids of your own? Be the fun Aunt or Uncle you wish you'd had when you were a kid.

• Call your parents and other important people in your life. Schedule a periodic reminder to call your parents and block out a good hour for the conversation. They'll appreciate it, and you'll appreciate it even more when they're gone.

There are many other forms of injustice in this world. My parents raised me to believe that it was immoral to let people go hungry, that racism was bad because fairness means treating all people equally, and that peace was God's will. Therefore, my morals lead me to fight poverty, racism, and militarism wherever I can.

Find some injustice in the world that concerns you greatly and put your technical know-how into helping. Here are some ideas:

• Help a non-profit that fights injustice, web edition. Find their web site and offer to help maintain it. Better yet, install a Content Management System or blog software so that they can maintain it without your help. Make sure they have a one-click donation system like http://www.JustGiving.com.

• Help a non-profit that fights injustice, PC edition. Offer to visit their office once a week to check over their PCs and answer their general PC questions. Make sure they have virus/spyware scanners that update automatically. Make sure their data backups work. If they need new applications, help them find off-the-shelf solutions.

• Join your school board. As a geek, I was always dissatisfied with my school's lack of science education and the over-emphasis on sports. School board seats often go uncontested, or can be won with a campaign budget of a few hundred dollars. Then you have direct influence on the budget and priorities of your school system. Fund anti-bullying programs, chess clubs, straight-gay alliances, music, and the arts.

• Run for public office. The fact that there are so many ill-conceived laws governing technology is not going to change until enough geeks run for office.

Fighting injustice is like dropping acorns wherever you go. Sometimes, you return to a place and find something wonderful growing; other times, there is nothing. Most of the time, however, you'll never know how much you've changed the world or how many people's lives you've touched. You just have to trust that it was worth it.

Peace.

Tom Limoncelli