It's About Time

It's About Time by Suzanne M. Schweikert M.D. Copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved In this column, Dr. Suzanne Schweikert explores how we use, lose, spend, waste, and fritter away (this can be a good thing!) our time. As an Ob-Gyn, Dr. Suzanne Schweikert has had experience (more than she would like) with extreme time demands, not to mention sleep demands and stress demands. She recently left private practice to pursue public health, clinical research, and writing. Dr. Schweikert is a contributing author to the recently released book, Take Back Your Time, and is an advocate for universal health insurance and a shorter work week (30 hours sounds about right). Dr. Schweikert has completed a non-fiction book, The Pregnant Traveler, and is currently working on two novels. Comments, thoughts, and personal experiences on time related topics are welcome. Email: Dr.Schweikert@WritersMonthly.com

Traffic School
On our first day of school, we learned several things. For instance, we learned we were saving upwards of $15,000 by going to traffic school (according to Uncle Steve’s creative calculations). And, it is the law that one must turn one’s blinker on for at least 100 feet before turning. Personally, I have always assumed that if a blinker is on for that long, the driver has forgotten about it. We also learned that the average person breaks about 2,000 laws before getting caught, so in a fatalistic world view, this was simply our time.

The Quality of Life
Lately, it has come to my attention that many of the infants I’ve "saved," i.e. those who miraculously survive their own births, go on to live nightmares of sickness, self-abuse, abuse by others, and so on. Some die a slow and prolonged death in childhood, while others are wiped out in their teens, in the wink of a speeding bullet. And for the rest of us who live into our adulthoods, we die slowly or quickly, depending on the circumstances...

Driving M.A.D.D.
And now that we’re on the subject, why do we call these "accidents" anyways? What is so accidental about car crashes? If not premeditated, then aren’t they are at least predictable? And aren’t things that are predictable also preventable? It seems that people who are stressed out, running late, frustrated about wasting their lives in traffic, or just plain exhausted, are bound to make a few mistakes. Is this really accidental, or is it the price we pay for the pace we keep?

No Time for Dog Labs
My first contact with these dog labs was eleven years ago, when I joined the ranks of the first-year medical school class. Of my fellow 126 students, twenty-five or so refused to participate. The pharmacology professor who ran the labs was outraged by our demonstration of so-called morality. How on earth did we, lowly first year medical students, know what was good for us? (As we all know from watching television's E.R., medical students know absolutely nothing.)

Take Back Your Health
First of all, I’ll let you in on a secret: Physicians are not shining examples of the "take back your time" concept. We work longer hours than is healthy. We often fall into the trap of believing that material things will compensate for a lack of time. We buy lots of time saving devices. We rush around on freeways. And we hurry our patients through visits like they are products on an assembly line.

Guaranteed To Save Time, Or Your Money Back
What I've learned from my leaf-blower epiphany (and a few others that came before) is how the most simple but time-consuming tasks, like cooking, washing, sweeping, and yes, even writing with pen and paper, can be more rewarding than anything I could have planned. In fact, before I quit my 90 hour per week job...

Taking Time To Be Sick
I used to feel the same way about being sick: What a waste of time. Two years into my residency, when I had been coughing and sniffling for what seemed like months, I asked my doctor if there was anything wrong with me. Perhaps I was immunocompromised or had been infected with some terrible disease. Her answer surprised me...

Car People
Maybe people who drive a lot, like me, go about life thinking and behaving as if we are cars. Perhaps our interactions with other folks, and with strangers in particular, have taken on the personality quirks of motor vehicles...

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