Time is Precious, but We are Not Running out of Time
As part of conventional wisdom the society seeks to instil in us, we are often reminded that either time or life is simply too short. Mostly, these are brought to our notice for a noble purpose of propelling us to stop wasting our time. Yet part of me does not sit well entirely with this modern concept of time. Time is finite of course, but finite does not equate to inadequacy. Instead, we always feel that time is inadequate for many reasons, which may turn out to be the disease that has been telling us that time indeed is too short. And it is this disease that we hope we can find a miraculous cure for.
While I deem my 24 hours abundant, many deem it inadequate. And the reason is simple, because I make the necessary choices to spend my 24 hours daily.
Certainly, the importance of time is incontestable. In fact, it is the most important resource that all of us possess equally. 24 hours to me is, in absolute term, the same as 24 hours to everyone else. Unfortunately, in the contextual term, while I deem my 24 hours abundant, many deem it inadequate. And the reason is that I make the necessary choices to spend my 24 hours daily. I am however, not born this way, and similar to many others, I too subscribed to the conventional concept of chronic time shortage.
Time Management is Only a Small Part of the Game
As recent as two years ago, I relied on various time management methodologies to alleviate my chronic shortage of time, which helped to a certain extent, yet, it was obvious the puzzle was incomplete. Upon reaching a breaking point, I decided to seek the missing pieces and in the process, spoke with many people from all walks of life to find out, what could be lacking.
A humble deliveryman once said, “Time was never lacking, I put all my heart and soul into all these deliveries and seeing you guys smile in appreciation made my day.” A cab driver chuckled at my assessment on time management and said: “Go to the basics, spend minimal time on getting the money you need to feed your family, then spend the rest with your family and on happy moments.” And a wiser friend of mine opened my eyes when she said “It’s not about time, it’s about the mind. We, humans, are never satisfied.”
If we clutter our life with activities and tasks that we do not choose to do, then time will never be enough.
The realization hence came knocking, it is about understanding that our perception on the abundance of time is affected by our choices and priorities in life. If we clutter our life with activities and tasks that we do not choose to do, then time will never be enough. Remember a time when we catch ourselves complaining about difficult work, bad days, or bad partners. We not only spend time on things we do not like to do, we too spend much time complaining about it.
Finding our Purpose and Working towards it
Finding our purpose in life and making the choices to pursue it ensures that we maximize time utilization on activities we deem necessary to reach our lifelong purpose, creating satisfaction and generating less complaint along the way.
Similar to everything else in life, our choices in life matters. Time may be finite but we are often capable of choosing what activities to do. Finding our purpose in life and making the choices to pursue it ensures that we maximize time utilization on activities we deem necessary to reach our lifelong purpose, creating satisfaction and generating less complaint along the way.
No, we have to start finding our purpose today, even if we are only taking baby steps before we can crawl, walk and run, because taking the first step is always the defining moment.
Most of the time, however, we choose to wander around without finding a real purpose in life far too long. “I will do this once I have enough money”, “I will travel the world once I am successful”, I will find my purpose in life once things in my life get more stable” and many similar variations of these waits and see attitudes form our inertia.
No, we have to start finding our purpose today, even if we are only taking baby steps before we can crawl, walk and run because taking the first step is always the defining moment. And once we catch a glimpse of our purpose in life, draw up the plan and processes to get us there, then live our lives by undertaking activities to get us closer to achieving that purpose.
It is the purpose that we can identify ourselves with.
Purpose, however, is not the same as what society expects us to achieve. It is not the money or career success that our society programs us to believe to be worthy of our purpose in life. It is the purpose that we can identify ourselves with. It is a goal in life that we can proudly proclaim to everyone who walks into our life. It is a goal that can bring us satisfaction in life and the feeling that we have indeed lived our life to the fullest.
In time, as satisfied individuals, we will enjoy the luxury of time abundance, not only because we start doing what we wish to do with our lives earlier, but we are also able to be satisfied with every breathe we take and every time we spend on anything.
Making the Choices to Spend the Time on Externalities
Unfortunately, as part of this highly competitive society, we often possess little liberty to choose what to spend our time on, especially in our quest for building the life we hope for. Contrary to the most popularized idealistic beliefs, we cannot dream of a life that we wish for and pursue it without any hiccups. Certainly, pursuing our purpose in life is important, but we are never free from externalities, external factors beyond our control that may grant us a boost or force us to step on the brake.
A person who dares to dream and be grounded by reality at the same time, wastes no time complaining and stressing over challenges.
These externalities, however, present us with challenges necessary to enrich our lives. Accepting these brakes in life reflects our maturity and understanding of reality. One can be idealistic but reality often requires us to man up to the challenges that come into our life uninvited. And a person who dares to dream and be grounded by reality at the same time wastes no time complaining and stressing over challenges. And perhaps not surprisingly, both complaining and stressing over matters without taking actions, form the fattest of leeches constantly sapping time out of our life.
More importantly, however, while we accept and struggle through these externalities, our progress towards achieving our purpose must move in parallel. And no, we will not run out of time, because if we map the course to reach our life purpose adequately well, we will be spending more time working on reaching our endpoint in life rather than tackling externalities. If we ever find this is not the case, perhaps, we need to go back to the drawing block to re-map the course.
And now, let us cease to blame time. Instead, make the necessary choices to pursue a path we desire, with the intention to find satisfaction in walking down the journey of life. Time will then become the least of our worries.
