© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete 2005 revised text of Building Yourself, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's guide to living the successful life.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Building Yourself Table of Contents
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• Time the destroyer is time the preserver. T.S. Eliot (1888–1965)

To make the most of time, it pays to take advice from two opposite schools of thought. You can take either one too far. You can also take the best from each.

The first school of thought is based on the frantic percep­tion that time is slipping away, no matter what we do. There is so little time and so much to do! So we must manage every second of it. We must cram in as much activity as we can to reach our goals, otherwise we risk being left behind.

There is no question that this view has some merit. Time management is a valuable tool in a complicated world. When properly done, using the proper perspective, time manage­ment allows us to get more done in less time. If all goes well we might even get some time off.

Of course, people do take this view a little too far. Once you satisfy the first part of the equation by managing time instead of wasting it, you can move away from an obsession with time. If you see time as your enemy instead of your ally, time will grind you down. If you try to get everything done at once, you'll end up getting nothing done at all.

The other school tells us that there is time for everything if we only learn to work around the passage of time. It means that we approach time maturely and make it our friend. We work with it, respecting its demands and limitations.

We put our plans into motion at the appropriate time. When we have the ammunition we need to win. When we have the allies we need to win. When our audience or market is receptive to buy what we have to sell. When we ourselves have built the personal attributes we need to see our projects through. If we rush headlong and excited into something, we hit the rocks at the bottom of the swimming hole.

Yes, you desperately want the keys to the car. But you know better than to ask dad right after he comes home from the office, don't you? You've got to sit through dinner. Maybe he'll ask you what you're doing tonight, and then you can bring the request into the conversation smoothly. If not, you'll still have the perfect moment or two when your skilled antennae tell you that the time is right to strike.

The car keys dilemma can be an analogy for any task in life. All asking involves a sense of timing. You get better at it as you grow in experience and judgment. And the way to get the experience and hence the judgment is to go out there and do some asking.

Of course, when you're out in the line of fire, sometimes you get hit. But you can make time your comrade in arms. When you're abused by the cruel world, when you're rejected, when your plans are shot down, ridiculed or ignored, you can use time to recover, to reflect, to re‑plan, to regenerate. When you later look back on the time you spent recovering from your setback, you may consider it very well spent.

Now take out a dollar bill. The fellow whose face is on the dollar bill, George Washington, was not a brilliant general when Congress appointed him to lead the rag‑tag American revolutionary army in 1775. In the battles in and around New York in 1776 he was outclassed by the British, outmaneu­vered, soundly and utterly defeated. He and a small portion of his army escaped by the skin of their teeth. Freezing in Pennsylvania that winter while the British dined by warm fires in New York City, he had the time to reflect, to re‑plan, to regenerate. Despite dismal morale, desertions, lack of food, no pay for the troops, little ammunition, George Washington used the time to plan one of the most brilliant moves in military history. With a few steadfast men—very few—he crossed the Delaware and attacked and defeated the enemy.

Washington's daring move came six months after his defeat in New York. If he had bounced back in rage and tried to defeat the British during the summer, they would have swatted him like a fly. Like all successful people, he had a sense of time and how to use it to his advantage. Some of the finest generals in history were masters of the art of retreat.

It's not easy to have to retreat, or to have dad say no to the request for the car keys and the twenty. But by hitting the rocks in the harbor, we do learn how to navigate. We come to learn that not only is there time to get things done without ruining our health with worry, but there is also time to bounce back from our setbacks.