The Idle Fisherman – A Pleasant Life

A corporate executive, on holiday in a small, Greek sea-coast village, was strolling by the docks and taking
in the local colour. He complimented one fisherman on the quality of his catch.
“How long did it take you to get all those fish?” he asked.
“Not very long,” answered the Greek. “An hour or two.”
“Then why didn’t you stay out longer to catch more?”
Shrugging, the Greek explained that his catch was sufficient to meet his needs, and those of his family.
The executive asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a nap with my wife. In the evening, I go to the
village to see my friends, dance a little, play the bouzouki, and sing songs. I have a full life.”
The executive said, “Well I have an MBA from Harvard and I’m sure I can help you. You should start by
fishing longer every day. You’ll catch extra fish that you can sell. With the revenue, you can buy a bigger
boat. With the extra money the larger boat will bring you, you can buy a second boat and a third one, and so
on, until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middleman, you can then
negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant.
You can ship fish to markets all around the world. In time, you can then move to New York City to direct
your huge enterprise.”
“How long would that take?” asked the Greek.
“Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years,” replied the executive.
“And after that?”
“When your business gets really big, you can sell stock and make millions!” exclaimed the executive with
zeal.
“Millions? Really? And after that?”
“After that you’ll be able to retire, live in a small village near the coast, sleep late, play with your
grandchildren, catch a few fish, take a nap with your wife, and spend your evenings singing, dancing,
and playing the bouzouki with your friends.”

Time’ is a word that forms many collocations. It’s part of lots of phrasal verbs, idioms and expressions. Let’s
take a look at 11 common words that go well with ‘time’ in this short story.

“It was lunchtime and as I had time on my hands, I thought it was high time to meet up with an old school
friend. I called Sam and asked if he had time to meet me for lunch and he said he would love to spend some
time with me and that we should meet at 1pm.
We met at the cafe down the road and I was on time but he called me to say he was running behind time and
would be 5 minutes late so I read a newspaper to kill some time. He’s late all the time so I was expecting to
wait and in the meantime I enjoyed catching up on the latest news.
Time went by and he arrived a little later. We had a great time eating and drinking and soon it was evening.
Time flies when you are having fun! Sam had to leave to be in time to catch his train.’See you next time’ I
said as he left.”
Which expression means the following?
1. time to eat in the middle of the day
2. extra time to use
3. the right time for something (usually that you have delayed)
4. to use time to do something
5. to do something at the correct time
6. when you are doing things after their scheduled time
7. very often
8. time passed
9. enjoyed ourselves
10. time passes quickly when you are enjoying yourself
11. to arrive before the correct time
 8 time management tips
Time is precious, particularly when it comes to running a small business. While being your own boss is a
dream for many, it comes with a lot of responsibility. No doubt, you never seem to be able to check off all
the items on your to-do list. From accounting and inventory, to networking and marketing your company, it
may seem like there’s an endless number of tasks and never enough time.
If you want to maintain some semblance of work-life balance, your time management skills really need to be
on point. After all, there are never more than 24 hours in a day. Some entrepreneurs respond to this fact of
life with focus and purpose. Others freak out.
If you find yourself in the latter group, don’t worry. With the right time management techniques, you can
take control of your time, making your work efficient, productive, and relatively stress-free. The following
time management tips can help ensure you get your work done when you’re in the office, so you can enjoy
your time away from work as well.

1. Set goals
Goal setting is crucial to any good time management strategy. To make sure you’re engaging in activities
that support your business goals, both short- and long-term, you need to define those goals in terms that are
clear and attainable. After all, if your goal is to just “to grow your business,” you might find yourself
overwhelmed and not know where to begin.
To counteract this paralysis, many companies find that the SMART goals methodology helps keep them on
task and on track. Standing for “Smart, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound,” SMART goals
provide clear, step-by-step tasks to help you get where you need to go.
For example, a SMART goal might be: “Increase traffic to my website from 1,000 to 5,000 unique monthly
visitors in the next six months.” When broken down, we can see that this is, indeed, a SMART goal:
 Specific: The goal states exactly what needs to be attained.
 Measurable: The goal can be measured with a specific tool, in this case, Google Analytics.
 Attainable: Rather than vaguely wishing to increase visitors — or setting a goal too high to reach — this
goal states a specific number that is well within the realm of possibility but still ambitious.
 Relevant: Instead of measuring something like site sessions or overall site visitors, the goal is to reach
potential new customers — always crucial when growing a small business.
 Time-bound: There is a due date set at the end of six months to attain this goal.
Once you’ve set your SMART goals, you can work backward to determine the individual steps you’ll need to
achieve your goals. Everything else is a potential time-waster. Your daily plan should revolve around
working on tasks and activities that directly relate to growing your business and generating revenue.

2. Prioritize wisely
Once you’ve set your goals and determined the individual tasks you need to complete to achieve them, it’s
time to prioritize. Of course, you want to make sure you’re getting things done, but they should be the right
things.
Stephen Covey, the co-author of First Things First, offers advice on how to work through your to-do list
based on urgency. His advice is to evaluate what’s on your plate, placing each task into one of the following
buckets:
 Important and urgent: If a task falls into this category, you know it must be done right away. Focus your
energy on completing your most important and urgent tasks before moving on to less time-sensitive items.
 Important but not urgent: These are tasks that may appear important, but upon closer examination, can be
postponed to a later date if necessary. While these items are likely integral to smoothly run your business —
perhaps you need to update your website or find a more efficient payroll solution — they are not do or die.
 Urgent but not important: Tasks that make the most “noise,” but when accomplished, have little or no
lasting value. In this category, you might find a sales call from a potential vendor seeking to work with you,
or perhaps a coworker drops by your desk unexpectedly to ask a favor. Delegate these tasks if possible.
 Not urgent and not important: Low-priority stuff that offers the illusion of being busy. Do these later.
Write down your three or four “important and urgent” tasks that must be addressed today. As you complete
each one, check it off your list. This will provide you with a sense of accomplishment and can motivate you
to move down the list, so you can also tackle less essential items in a timely fashion.
 3. Just say no
You’re the boss. If you have to decline a request in order to attend to what’s truly important and urgent, do
not hesitate to do so. The same goes for any projects or activities that you’ve determined are headed
nowhere: Be prepared to move on to more productive tasks. Learn from experience to avoid wasting time
later on.

4. Plan ahead
One of the worst things you can do is jump into the workday with no clear idea about what needs to get done.
While it might seem like a waste of time to take five to ten minutes to think ahead rather than getting straight
down to business, you’ll be surprised at how much more efficient you can be just by dedicating a little time
to planning out the rest of the day.
If you plan your time wisely, you can focus on one task at a time, rather than wasting time jumping from one
thing to the next (and rarely completing anything). This allows you to work smarter, not harder. Depending
on your personality, make one of the options below part of your daily routine:
 Plan the night before: At the end of the day, take 15 minutes to clear your desk and put together a list of the
next day’s most pressing tasks. It’s a great decompression technique, and you’ll feel better sitting down at a
clean desk in the morning.
 Plan first thing in the morning: Arrive a few minutes early and assemble your prioritized to-do list (see tip
two). This may prove to be the most productive part of your day.

5. Eliminate distractions
Start paying attention to the number of times someone interrupts you when you’re in the midst of an
important task. Track self-induced interruptions, too, particularly those of the social media variety. Your
smartphone is extremely useful, but it’s also highly addictive and among the most insidious time-wasters
known to man.
It may take a massive exercise in will power, but shut the door and turn off your phone to maximize your
time. Instead of being “always on,” plan a break in the day to catch up on email, make phone calls, talk with
staff, etc.

6. Delegate more often

If you’ve hired talented, dedicated employees, one of the most impactful management tools available to you
is the power to delegate. Running a successful small business depends on the owner’s ability to think about
what lies ahead and not get mired down in day-to-day operations. Look for opportunities to pass
responsibility for specific tasks to others on your team. That’s what you hired them for, isn’t it?

7. Track your time

How many productive minutes are you actually packing in each week? Time tracking is an extremely
effective tool to help you gauge exactly how much time a single task takes you. With a simple timesheet
tracker, you can quickly and easily clock in and out of various tasks or projects throughout the day.
Switch jobs or tasks with just one click using the TSheets mobile app or track time directly from your
desktop. Then generate robust, real-time reports to see exactly where you’re spending your most valuable
asset — and where it’s being wasted.

8. Take time for yourself

This tip is often forgotten in the hustle and bustle of running a successful business. However, taking care of
yourself — i.e. getting plenty of sleep and exercise — is critical to maintaining any upward growth
trajectory.
In fact, one Harvard study found that insomnia can cause the average worker to lose up to 11.3 days of
productivity each year, while another study found that regular exercise helps improve concentration, sharpen
memory, speed up your ability to learn, and even lower your stress levels.
Making sure you have some free time each day to spend on the people and things you love outside of your
business is important for your mental health, and can help keep you energized and passionate about your
work. After all, it’s important to keep things in perspective. You chose to become a small business owner,
and every day you get to wake up to a day full of the possibilities you created for yourself.
Answers:
1. lunchtime
2. time on your hands
3. high time to/for
4. spend time
5. on time
6. running behind time
7. all the time
8. time went by
9. have a great time
10. time flies when you are having fun
11. in time

Answers.
Task 1.
a) spend
b) waste
c) save
d) run out of
e) lose
f) make
g) invest
h) spare
i) have
j) manage
k) short of
l) take
 1/There are 12 collocations with Time here!
a) How do you _______ time at the weekends? – I like getting up late and walking in the park.
b) Unfortunately, there are so many traffic jams in the morning, so I _______ a lot of time.
c) We have to hurry, so we’d better go by taxi. It’ll _____ us a lot of time!
d) Let’s go shopping today! The sale finishes tomorrow and I don’t want to _____ ___ ___ time and miss a bargain!
e) No time to ______! Book your holiday now, or you may find yourself staying at home this summer!
f) If you feel stressed, you should try to _______ time for yourself and do something pleasant.
g) Now I want to _______ time and effort in finding a good job.
h) If you have some time to ______, I’d leally recommend you to go to that art school.
i) I don’t ______ much time for myself, but when I do, I try to get some exercise.
j) I’m very self-disciplined person and I ________ my time well.
k) If you’re ______ of time, I can help you to do the housework.
l) Don’t worry, there’s no rush! ______ your time!

3) Discuss these questions with your partner using the new expressions you’ve learnt

a) What do you like doing in your spare time?

b) Do you feel short of time? When? How do you usually react when this happens?
c) How much time do you waste in a week? When do you waste this time?
d) Is there anything in your life that you want to make more time to do? If so, what is it?
e) Have you ever run out of time in a test or exam? How did you feel about it?
f) In the future, is there anything you would like to invest time and energy? What is it?
g) In your own language, can you use the expression ‘Time is money’? Or are there other ways of talking about
time? What are they?

1/There are 12 collocations with Time here!

m) How do you _______ time at the weekends? – I like getting up late and walking in the park.
n) Unfortunately, there are so many traffic jams in the morning, so I _______ a lot of time.
o) We have to hurry, so we’d better go by taxi. It’ll _____ us a lot of time!
p) Let’s go shopping today! The sale finishes tomorrow and I don’t want to _____ ___ ___ time and miss a bargain!
q) No time to ______! Book your holiday now, or you may find yourself staying at home this summer!
r) If you feel stressed, you should try to _______ time for yourself and do something pleasant.
s) Now I want to _______ time and effort in finding a good job.
t) If you have some time to ______, I’d leally recommend you to go to that art school.
u) I don’t ______ much time for myself, but when I do, I try to get some exercise.
v) I’m very self-disciplined person and I ________ my time well.
w) If you’re ______ of time, I can help you to do the housework.
x) Don’t worry, there’s no rush! ______ your time!

3) Discuss these questions with your partner using the new expressions you’ve learnt

h) What do you like doing in your spare time?

i) Do you feel short of time? When? How do you usually react when this happens?
j) How much time do you waste in a week? When do you waste this time?
k) Is there anything in your life that you want to make more time to do? If so, what is it?
l) Have you ever run out of time in a test or exam? How did you feel about it?
m) In the future, is there anything you would like to invest time and energy? What is it?
n) In your own language, can you use the expression ‘Time is money’? Or are there other ways of talking about
time? What are they?