Ever watch closely as a teenager or younger kid watches TV, listens to an iPod or CD? They change the channel or song constantly. They rarely seem to listen to the whole song.

Today’s guest post (I’m in a canoe, remember?) is a video of a talk by Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo (a conference). Transcript is here if you prefer to read rather than listen/watch.

Don’t change the channel if you don’t care about Web 2.0 (a thing, sorta). The talk is about time, what we do with it and so on, but there’s another message there.

It’s also about understanding your employees, what motivates them (much less your kids), and perhaps even doing a better job of understanding your clients.

If you’re a little older, this just might make you crazy.

Clay explains some of why that is, and it also just might help you understand how to improve the conversations you have with clients and with employees.

Insightful stuff.

No, this is not another time management discussion. I simply want to put your day in the proper context.

After all, almost 60% of the year is behind us and I want you to be sure you’re getting closer to making it where you wanted to be by the end of the year.

So… if you are wasting an hour a day – doing *whatever* – what do you think that’s worth to you?

If you have 10 employees and each one of them is wasting an hour a day, it would probably bother you. At least I hope it would.

Lets assume for the sake of argument that you take $100,000 out of your business each year. If you waste an hour a day, that’s $51 and change you waste every day, or about 85 cents per minute. That’s assuming you make that 100 large in an eight hour day, working 50 weeks per year.

If you waste that hour a day all year long, you just tossed $12,750 out the door (.85 per minute * 60 minutes per day times 5 days per week times 50 weeks per year).

Is whatever you’re doing today worth the money you’re paying for it? Is it generating the $ you need it to?

Look at it another way, if $100K is your benchmark. $100K divided by 5 days per week and 50 weeks per year (Im assuming you take 2 weeks off) is $400.

That’s $400 per weekday, day in, day out. If you work 8 productive hours per day…

If you only manage 7 productive hours per day on average all year long, then you’re up to $457 per weekday.

If your numbers are bigger, that wasted time gets a lot more expensive.

Stay focused.