Time management is life management

By Nuwan SAMARAPATHI

Living in this world of scarcity and monitory values, everything has a price tag attached to it, and ‘Time’ is something that the majority in the modern world value more than anything else.

Although all of us work under the same clock and have the same 24 hours per day, the seconds of our times are valued differently, ranging from mare few rupees to millions of dollars. And, in the corporate world, you often hear time being refereed to as something to take charge over and ‘manage’.

But is TIME something that we can ‘manage’? Let us take few minutes to explore this interesting concept.

Our lifelong relationship with TIME:

Our relationship with ‘time’ begins at the time we were born. Even before a name was given to a newborn baby, the time of the birth is noted, and in our culture, rushed to the astrologer. We grow up with ‘time’ - we celebrate births and anniversaries, guided by our calendars.

We read our first words, lay the first brick to a new house, get married and take the new car out - all watching the clock closely to ensure it is the ‘right’ time. And when we die, the first the doctor does after checking the vital signs is to look at the clock to note the time of death. Time is indeed a life long companion.

And of that reason, we talk as if TIME has its own life and energy. We celebrate certain times of the year either with kiribath and oil cake or with Champagne and fireworks. We fear time, specially the future and praise the past which was always better than the present.

We take about ‘doomsday’ and also about the narrow escape we had with the ‘Y2K’ bug and the predicted end of days at the turn of the millennium.

And TIME is always an icebreaker in conversations where we either complain about the lack of time (to go to the gym, cook a proper meal for the family, take up further studying, etc) or we praise it (‘thank God it is Friday’, ‘weekends are the best!’).

If you have ever listened to people speak of TIME, you’ll be amazed at the in-depth understanding they claim to have of it. They say: Time changes appearances (“oh the time has changed so much since I last saw you”) Time changes people’s perspectives and opinions (“the time changed the views of her parents about the man she eloped with and they accepted him into the family”) Time changes social expressions (“in my time we never wore the scanty clothes the youth wear these days”) - Time changed everything (“give it some time, time will heal and change everything”)

Given that we attribute this much and claim to know about time like we know our own brother, no wonder we each have a watch strapped to our wrists and few other time keepers around us all the time, on the walls, on the mobile, on our computers and even on the margin of the television screens! Often we keep diaries that are nicely divided in to hours of the day and we run around looking at the diary and the wrist watch as if we would not know whether to turn left or right if we lose either of them!

But that does not really stop us from taking time for granted! We all know that we will die one day and therefore have limited time on this earth, but that does not stop us from taking what we consider as ‘insignificant’ time-frames for granted, we ‘wasted’ seconds, minutes and even days without really losing sleep over it.

But in our conversations we are the masters of enslaving time: we talk about ‘allocating time’, ‘tracking time’, ‘spending time’, ‘killing time’, ‘wasting time’, and even the incredible ‘making time’!

But...

Does time really exist?

Close your eyes to the timekeeper strapped to your wrist and close the day planner momentarily. Think about this for few seconds:

“Time is a concept created to track transitions and changes: day to night, young to old, life to death”.

TIME, the conventional way we understand it as seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years, DOES NOT EXIST!

Time is a man-made product of convenience. What actually exists is LIFE!

This is why we need to have a mental transition from ‘time management’ to ‘LIFE MANAGEMENT’! Now you may ask why. Without taking too much of your time, I will give you one reason: you cannot manage something that you do not have any control over and YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL OVER TIME!

But, most of us (unless you are living in a prison or being kept alive by life-support equipments at the hospital) DO have control over: How we spend our lives What we do with our days How we support others to live their lives, and What legacy we leave behind!

Remind yourself that: 1. life can end any second and the present moment is all we have anyway 2.lives and earth we live on are changed, constructively and destructively, second by second, around the world Just to give you few examples.....

- every SECOND of the day, 4 new people start their hearts beating and begin a new journey on this planet, while 6.3 billion hearts beat once in unison around the world as if to great the new heartbeat - every FIVE SECONDS of the day, people around the world spend US$ 8 million while sending 41 million text messages and 700,000 emails - every TEN SECONDS, whether you like it or not, know it or not, you travel 298km! (your speed 109,435kmph, faster than the fastest bullet which travels at 5472kmph)

You are on an amazing journey on this planet from the minute of your first heartbeat to the last and it is even more amazing to realize that the in-between the first and last heartbeat is yours to ‘manage’, to ‘spend’ and to ‘make most of’! And this why we need to make our transition from ‘time’ to ‘life’ management immediately because what we claim and talk about as ‘TIME’ is actually ‘LIFE’!

When we say we spend time ....we actually spend life! - When we say we waste time......we actually waste life! -When we say we kill time.....we actually kill life! -When we say we do not make most of our time...we do not make most of our lives! And when you respect time, what you respect is your life and its amazing journey on this planet.

(The writer is an expert in the field)