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I
grew up in a family where time management was essential, and it was always part of the discussions in our daily life. The motto was “hurry up because it is late”. It was seldom late though. I’m not sure why, but my family has been always stressed by the concept of time. No matter whether we were going to school, preparing for a trip, going out for pizza or just for food shopping, it was always late... but late for what? The butcher was not waiting for us and the pizzeria was not closing till late. I was missing something, maybe the famous big picture.
So, I grew up thinking it was always late. I thought that maybe over time I was going to be more patient hence less stressed about time. It did not happen! Actually, the opposite. Age got me even more stressed. The older I get the less time I have, which means the less things I can do before leaving. There is no way to stop the time and it gets even worse. The world keeps turning as it did before, but the pace of change of everything is accelerating and I need to keep pace or catchup with it.
This is my relationship with time and the reason why I need to keep track of it. I’m obsessed with being on time because I want to make sure I get the most out of the (little) time I have. A watch, then is my needed companion for the journey of life. It helps me better planning and keeping on track during the day. A true passion that I then translated also into a job. It was actually the request of one of my kids, but this is another story.
My passion for time and watches led me better investigating both arguments. I’ve been through lots of personal and professional experiences and some have enriched me on the two specific topics. Some were very structured learning, other were only thoughts and considerations made post factum. I decided to put some order on those learning so, I started collecting and framing notes about watches, the horology industry and tips and techniques about time management.
Over time I then started realizing that other people could benefit from those notes. In particular, I noticed interest by people who are just approaching the horology world or entrepreneurs who struggle with time management or just curious minds and people looking for self-improvement. For this reason, I decided to put together the collection of notes and frame them around two topics: the first is about watches and the horology industry while the second is about time management and what we could achieve via improving the way we manage time. The two topics are at the same time independents and interlinked. For this reason, I tried to divide them into independent chapters – opposite to the structure of the usual books in which every chapter is linked to the previous one. The purpose is to help myself first and you, now through this book, better navigating through those two topics. You’ll notice that the first chapters are about “watches” while only the last nine chapters are more specific to the concept of “time” and “time management”.
Finally, the book is written in a very simple language and despite I tried to be direct to the point I might have done some repetition. Those are often done on purpose. In fact, I believe that for this topic the more we repeat the better it is. We tend to read a forget most of the things that relate to work-life balance and time management. Hence to ensure we engrain those concepts I referred to the advice of our Latin’s friends who used to say “repetita iuvant”!
Now it is your time to make the most of this book and go through the chapters that are furthermost relevant to you (or read them all). Happy reading!
CHAPTER I
The 25 Most Interesting Facts About Watches
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