With Passion and Energy, you’ll make the time

As usual, I was recently inspired by Sir Keith Peters and a post he made entitled ‘Where do I find the time?‘. Keith’s post is in response to a question I have no doubt he gets asked a lot. If you’ve followed Keith’s career, and if you’ve been lucky to work with Keith, as I have, you could understand why. Keith continues to write amazing books for the Flash community. He continues to share amazing and inspiring code with other developers. His recent portfolio at Infrared5, especially his work on the Ribbit Flash components, proves Keith has no plans to let up anytime soon.

Where do I find the time? While I don’t get asked this question probably 1/10th as much, it does come up a lot. It was recently asked by a respected co-worker at Ribbit. I shrugged it off, simply not acknowledging nor accepting any over-achieving. They persisted, even proposing an answer. Their solution was simple… my passion and energy.

After I read Keith’s post and watched the brilliant video of Clay Shirkey, I realized that extra time for most isn’t enough. As a matter of fact, sometimes excess time works against you. The key is identifying projects and tasks that are a product of YOUR passion and energy. When you are able to channel those two forces together and point them at something, I bet you’ll be able to complete the task in stride. In fact, the more passion and energy you can dedicate to a task, the quicker it will get accomplished.

I’ve looked back at some of the cooler things I’ve been able to accomplish over the past 18 months and it is very true. Those tasks I’ve been passionate and energetic about were completed in no time, often well exceeding even what I had set out to do with them. I’m sure Keith probably realizes the same. Although, with limited time, perhaps we only make room for those tasks and activities we have the most passion and energy for.