What Speed Means to Marketplace Listeners

		Read More Speed Commentaries • Straight Up • Define Our Goals • At What Cost? • Time and Fruit • Workaholism • Faster and Faster • Overcoming Limitations • Length of Time • A State of Mind • Theory of Relativity • What About Honolulu? • A New Career From Speed • Speed Is Nothing New • It's All Relative • We're Being Sold Speed • Speed Means Missing Out • Time is Priceless • The Ride Keeps Getting Faster • Family First • Slowing Down for Frugality • Speed Serves Me • A Fortunate Layoff • Interruptions • Our Country's Material Obsession • A Personal Slowdown • Using Speed to My Advantage • I Don't Miss Much • Not Enough Hours In the Day • Peaceful • Speed, Oh Speed • Out of Control • I Live By Speed • Happy to Be Relaxed • Speed Is Choice Index of Comments

Time is Priceless (June 28)
Time is worth more than any consumer goods. The time we take in earning money to buy, in buying, in storing and caring for stuff and eventually in disposing of it is priceless.

Services may help get us time. Most goods, even those labeled as time savers, do not.

Andrea Palmer
Swarthmore, PA

The Ride Keeps Getting Faster (June 28)
The first time I knew I was on the ride was in kindergarten. The next thing I knew, I was finshing elementary school, and entering high school. Before I knew it, I completed college, grad school, medical school, fellowships, got married, and had three kids. Every time I thought some activity would take forever, it passed in the blink of an eye.

Now, my oldest son has graduated high school and is preparing to enter college. This ride is much faster than all the others that have been described. It is more interesting because the brakes don't work, and no matter how hard I drag my heels, the darn thing won't slow down. Also, I'm not sure where it is really going, and when the ride ends, but I know the rest of the ride will also happen too fast. This is a real thrill!

Scott H. Kurtzman
Simsbury, CT

Family First (June 28)
I decided a couple of years ago, in order to spend more time with my daughters—three and five years old at the time—to cancel all my time-sensitive activities except work. I based my decision on my evaluation of the priorities of the important things in my life.

Using that decision as my number-one litmus test, I have avoided getting bogged down by activities that continue to fill my available time. In the process, I also enabled some interesting capabilities to my schedule.

With the exception of two nights during which I participate in my personal hobbies—with my girls, amazingly—I have no time-pressure things outside of my career pressing me. As a result, if I choose, I am able to take longer lunches and afternoons off as I please and make up the effort in the evenings or the weekend; this has enabled me to do many school-based events without negatively impacting work.

By working with my company to get me a laptop computer on which I can work, it has also enabled me to take the kids to McDonald's to play while allowing me to meet my work commitments.

Yes, it means taking up a couple of my lower-priority items on my own learning instead of attending classes. But it seems to me a small price to pay so that I get my time with my kids when they are most into spending time with me.

Martin C. Nagel
Chandler, AZ

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