To answer the question all at once, because many people have been reaching out for friendship, and I give them quick one-sentence texts and very short emails, it’s not personal. I have many friendships, and I like that I do. But I don’t traditionally maintain them. In my life, there isn’t a lot of time to ask about how the dogs and cats are doing, and I certainly am not one who spends time standing around the grill in the backyard with friends sipping beer and talking about lawnmowers. There is nothing wrong with that; many people enjoy that kind of thing. I might if I didn’t otherwise have the type of life I enjoy. But it’s certainly not a rejection of friendship that I express to all those who have reached out, and it’s been happening so frequently that I do want to put things in context a bit. If I can avoid some hurt feelings, I care enough to at least do that. I try to answer all the emails I get from people. For instance, my Gmail account is so out of control that if anybody sends me an email there, it’s highly likely that I will not see it. There are over 500,000 emails there that I will never have time to open, so I have other email accounts that are much more manageable that I use for the needed correspondence. It’s an interesting problem to use technology to reach as many people as possible and not lose touch with the personal relationships that can quickly saturate life with too much interaction. As I came to think about it recently, it really is an astonishing number of correspondence, and managing them all might otherwise make each of them feel disenfranchised, which certainly isn’t the intention.
Professionally, I apply about 70 hours per week toward those objectives, which by itself is a lot. Then beyond that, I put in about 30 hours a week, usually between the hours of 2 AM and 6 AM, toward political endeavors, which I view not as a networking opportunity but purely as community maintenance. I want to live in a good world, so I spend that kind of time each week to do so. Some people actually move into elected office, and many have asked me about doing so in many positions. But the truth is, I can do the most with the time I have available in the way that I do because I am interested in so many community functions. Even though I talk about it a lot in specific formats, education issues are less than 1% of what I spend my time on. There are actually many more topics that I am much more passionate about, but public education is a predecessor to them. So, you must do one thing before you can do the other thing kind of thing. So, if you are doing math, you can quickly see that there are only about 68 hours of sleep left for the week, which would be about 9 hours per day. But then there is spending time with family, which I do a lot. And I have a lot of interests and read many books. I read an average of 3 books per week. I manage that by utilizing reading time during meals. I answer emails usually while walking from one place to another. And there certainly isn’t much time to talk about lawnmowers and smoking meat in the backyard.
The truth is, I love the pace of my life and all the things I do in it. It’s a hyperactive life, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Many people believe that we are supposed to sit around meditating all the time, centering ourselves with quiet. To take time and find peace in our lives. I think that is a bunch of garbage. Life is meant to be productive. Quiet time is boring. I would go as far as to say that it’s lazy. And people who say such things are just trying to justify their own lack of ambition. If I had more hours in the day, I would quickly fill them with every possible opportunity to do something productive. They would not be filled with more sleep. I think only a few hours per night in the form of power naps is needed, and I’ve been doing this kind of pace for several decades, and it’s enjoyable. Not a burden the way many might think of it. There are occasions when hostile perpetrators came to my house at 2 AM hoping to find me asleep, only to be caught by me as I was walking around my yard at that hour with books in both hands and me reading them with a flashlight. Needless to say, they were quite surprised and frustrated by that reality. Being busy has its benefits, you might say it that way, depending on what a person values in life. And for me, it’s productivity. The more productive I am, the happier I am. But I do expect to accomplish things quickly. I don’t have much time for traffic or to get to things. I drive fast. I avoid crowds that might slow me down. And I expect to be doing multiple things all at the same time. My wife thinks it’s funny; we recently went to the grocery to get my mom some Mother’s Day flowers; I expected to be in and out in under 7 minutes. She wanted to look at the various breads and snacks, so she slowed us down and laughed at how fast I moved. She’s used to it, but she always manages to draw a joke when she has to experience my pace, which is so different from her.
Usually, especially regarding family things, she coordinates where everything happens. I show up where she says and do what needs to be done. I love family stuff, but like the grocery visit, I usually have an hourglass I’m looking at before the next thing needs to happen. So, without a relationship with my wife, it’s pretty hard to get me to be somewhere unless she arranges it. I appreciate when frineds send me texts telling me about something important, even if I don’t answer right away. Those reminders keep me plugged in where I might otherwise miss it. Reminders of big events are very useful as news stories. I don’t waste much time on gossiping in the newspapers or the nightly news. But I do appreciate it when people point things out that are useful. From trusted friends, it helps me manage chaos better and still get to the essence of a problem. But taking time for small talk and smelling the roses that are just not for me. And I don’t intend for people who would like to spend more time to get frustrated with the lack of effort on my part. It’s certainly not intentional. It’s just clock management. You get just so much time per day, and I literally work to make every second of every minute of every hour matter to the most efficient utilization. And it’s fun. But certainly not normal.
Rich Hoffman
