Limited Time Only

Take a minute to look around. How many things can you point to right now that you bought and never use? Like that foam covered device that’s never mastered a single thigh or that juicer that’s never seen a piece of fruit. Ya, you know what I’m talking about.

Magic Words

Scarcity is a marketing tactic. It’s a way to motivate us to buy something now that we otherwise would have put off and then forgotten about. Procrastination is a reality of human nature and it results in zero sales for them. So, one way the marketers of the world short circuit the wiring in our brains and get inside our OODA loop¹ is to give us a countdown, to create scarcity, to concoct the fear of missing out.

If ad campaigns were magicians or sorcerers their magic words would be, Act now! Limited time only! Ends soon! Last chance! We hear those magic words and before we know it, boom! there’s a cardboard box at our front door with a pair of Sauna Pants inside — and you don’t even remember what Sauna Pants are supposed to do. Why? Because the marketing tactic of scarcity works. Intellectually we understand that nothing lasts forever, but sometimes in order to act we need the emotion of fear — in this case, the fear of missing out — and that’s what the marketers sell us.

Carpe Diem

It seems that we are quick to spend our money on things that don’t matter and slow to spend our time on the things that do. I think the reason for that is our sense that time is running out gets lost in the monotony of the daily grind and in all the challenges and frustrations that come with it. Instead of seizing the day we just want it to be over. For parents, this is a problem. We only have so much time with our kids before they are off attempting to run their own lives.

My kids are older — two of which have one foot out the door — so I am on the back end of my time with them at home. I cannot change how I have spent the earlier years, but I can make changes for the future. I can still seize today, the day after, and the day after that, I just need a healthy fear of missing out.

Parkinson’s Law

In 1955 British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson wrote, “It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” What he was saying was that he noticed that the more time there was to get something done, the longer it took to do it. In other words, we could get more done in less time if we compressed the amount of time made available to do it.

You probably experienced this law when you crammed for final exams, you just never stepped back from your 13 cups of coffee and cup of Ramen noodles to notice. Or that time your in-laws were coming over and you’ve never cleaned a house so fast in your life. Parkinson’s observation that work expands to the amount of time allotted to it became appropriately known as Parkinson’s Law. Much like Newton discovering the force of gravity, Parkinson discovered that humans are lazy. (I, too, discovered a law of my own in which my wife is always right, known as The Law of Marriage, but that is a topic for another day).

Connecting the Dots

So, what do marketing ploys and Parkinson’s Law have to do with being a father? It is simply this. As fathers, we only have so much time with our kids. If we don’t view the time that we have with them as for a limited time only, our tendency will be to procrastinate. The work we put into our relationship with them will expand to the time allotted. We will get less done with more time, wasting opportunities. We will default to the lie that there is always next week, next month, or next year to go there, to do that, or to just be together.

Eighteen Summers

As dads, we need some scarcity in our lives when it comes to being with our kids. Since it’s summertime, here’s one way of looking at it. From the moment of their birth you only have eighteen summers with your son or daughter before they have to go do grown-up things, head off to college, move out, or join the military. Eighteen. That’s not a lot. But, if we apply Parkinson’s Law and give ourselves tighter windows in which to act, and, in effect, compress time, we can do more, be more, and accomplish more with our kids than we otherwise would have.

But we have to act now, it’s later than you think.

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• What was your dad like?
• What would you change about your time with him?
• How have those experiences influenced your parenting?
• How many summers do you have left with your kids?
• If the proverbial exam was tomorrow, what could you cram in?

__________________________

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¹OODA Loop – An acronym coined by US Air Force Colonel John Boyd which describes the decision making cycle, or loop, and stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.