Time Management

Well, tonight is the two hour season five finale of "24," and it promises to be exciting. Or at least it better be, since I haven't watched the show all year.

But Lugosi, if you haven't been watching it, why would you possibly bother watching the final two episodes of the year?

Well, if you stop and think about it, the previous 22 hours have been a total waste of time. So the real question is why anyone would have bothered watching those earlier installments. After all, what really matters is how Jack Bauer finally ends his day.

Look at it this way: If you go on vacation to, say, Baghdad, will you really care about the flight to Iraq? No, of course not! What ultimately matters is your stay in the city itself, what happens while you're there, visiting the local sights, enjoying the native cuisine, getting kidnapped by insurgents, and wondering whether you'll eventually get to return home with your head still attached to your body. So by tuning in to the finale and ONLY the finale, I'm basically eliminating the boring downtime spent on the airplane.

The same principle also works with books. By reading only the last couple of pages of a book, I can go to Border's and knock off the entire New York Times bestseller list during my lunch hour!