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Ben Chiganze  A Bassfisherman’s Approach
A colleague Remigio invited my friends and I to fish at Stobert Dam in Goromonzi district last weekend. Remigio in many respects represents the new breed of healthy conscious bass fishermen that are joining the game.
Unlike us he does not believe in bringing packed lunch to the dam. He actually advised us not to bring any food as he was going to share his food with us.

Little did we realise that we were going to be given both breakfast and lunch? We were told that wherever Remigio goes for fishing he takes along his one plate gas stove which enables him to prepare fresh food.

Given that he used a one plate stove to prepare both English breakfast and lunch (which comprise at least three types of relish), it took him a long time to finish cooking all the food. His relish comprised “road runner” chicken which takes a long time to cook. Some of his methods of cooking such as steaming fish were also time consuming.

Nonetheless we were treated to a five star breakfast and lunch at the dam, however due to the time he spent preparing food Remigio lost a lot fishing time and at the end of the day we had trouble convincing him to pack up so that we could leave.

While the rest of us were comfortable living at 4pm, Remigio still wanted to fish. He complained bitterly about not having adequate time to fish and that he was not able to cover some of the attractive spots in the dam thus he required more time to do so.

His complaint was very genuine because he only managed to fish for about four hours while the rest of the team fished for about eight hours. He had devoted about four hours to preparing food and cleaning his utensils.

He also grumbled about not having adequate fish to take home. The rest of the team had managed good catches during the best feeding hour of the bass which was between 11.30 and 12.45 on this particular day.

Unfortunately, this hour coincided with the time Remigio was preparing his “roadrunner” chicken and he missed the opportunity to catch bass.

On the other hand we wanted to travel back to Harare before dusk. Though we sympathised with Remigio’s plight, travelling at night would seriously compromise our safety.

We stuck to our guns and left the dam with a disappointed Remigio who had “so much to do in so little time”.

In my short life, I have met and interacted with people who hardly have enough time to socialise, play sports, supervise their children’s homework and solve workplace challenges. With all due respect, the people who fall into these category are always busy doing something just like Remigio who was busy with cooking “tasty” breakfast and lunch while the rest of us were fishing.

I do not doubt Remigio’s ability to cook fresh, healthy and tasty food but I am not convinced of his ability to prioritise his activities.

His ability to see time as a finite resource is highly questionable. Given that the main purpose of our trip was fishing, Remigio was supposed to devote more time to fishing as opposed to cooking. With all due respect to healthy conscious fishermen, cooking food should never account for more than 50 percent of fishing time.

Doing so would be rendering cooking as the primary activity which is not correct. To us Remigio was more of a caterer than a fisherman.

Choosing priorities is always challenging. Nevertheless it is imperative to establish which activity starts first and why. In the same vein you should be prudent enough to understand, which activities are critical and those that are not, which activities should be allocated more time and why.

Maybe Remigio could have allocated cooking time in such a way it would enable him to maximise on fishing time.

It is important to write down a list of activities and priorities and stick to it as much as is practically possible.

Everything you do competes for your time. Unfortunately, there are only 24 hours in a day and these hours cannot be stretched.

Family, politics, religion, education, work, sport and other social activities compete for your time. Ability to allocate ample time to work related activities while neglecting other important facets of life such as religion, family and others will create an unbalanced life.

Nelson Mandela was an icon to many but he fell short as a father because he spent a lot of time away from home while a greater part of his life was spent in prison. Similarly ignoring physiological needs such as hunger while fishing would render the fishing outing as an unbalanced human endeavour.

Therefore one must set his or her priorities in such a way which enables him or her to maintain a balanced lifestyle.

In most cases we have no adequate time to do what is important to us because we want to please as many people as possible at the expense of our priorities.

At times we get carried away with our hobbies such that they end up relegating our work to secondary activities.

It is very easy to get carried away with interesting hobbies which enables us to forgo core business. At any workplace there is interesting and uninteresting work. Remigio appears to be interested in cooking such that he allocated most of his time to cooking and less time to fishing. Golfing and fishing can easily become the core priorities of some individuals instead of work.

I appreciate the role that these sports play in terms of networking and building empires but still more time has to be allocated to the actual work.

Most people are ashamed to say “no” to activities that interrupt or interfere with their work. Resultantly they suffer quietly.

It is actually a strength to develop an ability to say “no” to friends and colleagues and more importantly to say “no” even to our own bad habits.

The writer is a managing consultant at CLC Training International. E-mail [email protected].