I read with great interest a story in the Sunday paper about the success of a local company. This is a huge, very well known company that has been very successful for a long time. The story highlighted their recent success in a relatively new market for them, specifically the snack market. 

One of the representatives from the company cited the following reason for their unprecedented growth in this market:  “The snack market is growing globally because of the increasing time poverty among consumers. We all have less time to prepare proper meals at home.”

The words “time poverty” instantly caught my attention. I had never seen a lack of time described that way. My first thought was “what a load of you know what.” Time poverty certainly had to be the invention of some clever marketing person hoping to give poor time managers “permission” to pig out on food they probably shouldn’t be eating.

So I did a bit of research on “time poverty” and discovered that not only is it a problem in the United States it is in fact a “crisis.” 

Now THAT is ridiculous! 

Much of the research said that people today are over-loaded with choices on how to spend their time and lack the ability to choose what they do and when they do it.

Now THAT is completely ridiculous! 

Poverty is defined as:  The state of being extremely poor or the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount.

There simply cannot be an ever increasing crisis of Time Poverty because there is not an ever decreasing amount of time! 

What we do have is an ever increasing level of poor judgement. We play the “victim” because we have so many TV channels that we just don’t have time to watch it all. We complain of a lack of time…to our “friends” on Facebook for 3 or more hours a day. 

We have companies like the one in this story telling people it is so normal and acceptable to be a crappy time manager that we make “snacks” just for people like you. 

The subtle message there is that you can’t succeed at managing your time. You’ll never be capable of “choosing” so just give up and pig out.

Well guess what – YOU DO have a choice, lots of them in fact and you do have the full ability to make them. Don’t buy into this garbage about “time poverty” because it just ain’t so! 

No one in the world has more time than you. No one in the world has even one more minute in the day than you. Not one single person. 

What someone may have is the ability to prioritize better than you. They may have real goals and plans that help guide those priorities. You can give yourself those tools too. 

It’s just a choice you have to make. I’d urge you to make it today. 

Now that’s NOT ridiculous!