“We need a specific time to get results form certain activity. We have no control over some of these things. For an example a paddy cultivator needs altogether 4 months to complete one cycle of cultivation. Out of this period one month is spent in preparation of the field. Provided water is available on time, sometimes he will be able to reduce this one month to one week by use of more efficient methodology such as machinery, more manpower or even more number of hours for a day.”
________________________
by Bimsara Gamage
(June 24, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) What is the definition for time? Why do we need to worry about time so much? What implications could time have on our lives if we take time very lightly? I have been trying to understand.
Firstly, time is a part of existence. Some one can ask you –“How old are you?” In reply you got to tell the duration of your existence in number of years. Probably you will say that you are 35 years old. A year is a measurement to time. Once this year is broken in to fractions, you will know exactly how many months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds we so far existed or lived in this world.
Unlike most other animals, we live or spend a good part of time in childhood mastering the art of living. In other words we spend time subjecting ourselves to a formal and informal education that will align and formulate our learning and experience. Generally it is considered that you spend 18 years (216 months, 936 weeks, 6,570 days, 157,680 hours, 9,460,800 minutes or 567,648,000 seconds) before becoming an adult-the age you will legally be permitted to be independent and make decisions to spend your time on your own. However, you will be actually entering the adulthood after your education in another two to four years time. For an example if you consider that you start working at the age of 22 years, you will have 38 years more for your retirement at 60. It is a lot of time. (456 months, 1,976 weeks, 13,870 days, 832,200 hours, 49,932,000 minutes or 2,995,920,000 seconds).
We need a specific time to get results form certain activity. We have no control over some of these things. For an example a paddy cultivator needs altogether 4 months to complete one cycle of cultivation. Out of this period one month is spent in preparation of the field. Provided water is available on time, sometimes he will be able to reduce this one month to one week by use of more efficient methodology such as machinery, more manpower or even more number of hours for a day. However he will absolutely have no control over the process of time taken for the maturating of the plant and the grain. This example will show us while some elements of time are in our control and some are not. What is in your control needs to be managed well to get better results.
If you take a house builder as our next example, one can say that it takes nine months to complete a 1000sqft house. Another builder may complete the same with in three months. Whether you spend three months or nine months, the process of work involved in building is the same. Quantities used will be the same. Number of labour hours spent also could be more or less the same. The builder who takes nine months will have additional overheads such as supervisory costs, travelling costs, capital costs and his living expenses etc. spanning over the additional period of six months as well. Whereas the builder who takes only three months may be capable of settling the capital costs early and earn three times of profits that of the other builder within nine months by completing two more houses with same overheads.
Since I understand this, I strongly disagree with the old saying that “Time is as precious as gold”. Instead I say “The time is invaluable and more precious than gold”. Why do I say this? Gold will have one specific value depending on its purity and weight. Nevertheless the value of time can only be determined depending on who handles it. All men and women do have 24hours for a day. 365 days for one year. Take notice of your neighbours, relations, friends, classmates and acquaintances who have had the same 24 hours a day during the past few years same as you had. Can you be happy about the way you have added value to your day?
“The foolish ignorant folk spend their time unprofitably, heedless of perfection. The wise man guards heedfulness as his greatest treasure” – Dhammapada - Chapter on Heedfulness (Appamada Vaggo)
Time is money
This is the basic principal that differentiates the rich from the poor. In a simple explanation, we can call a person who makes Rs. 5,000.00 a day as rich. The man who earns the same amount in one month is called poor. No one can be successful unless you keep on adding value to every second you exist, every minute you pass, every hour you spend and every day you live. If you want to achieve some task in life in two years from now, start adding necessary vales to your time and bring about the changes needed to your life now itself. You cannot wait till the 23rd month to start off. You must fragment your task to a monthly target and then to a weekly target, a daily target and finally to an hourly target. You must introduce the changes you need to have in your life also the same way. You must daily assess whether you are adequately adding value to your time and consciously effecting at least a fraction of the change you finally want to have at the end of the period. If you spend your time unprofitably, you are wasting lot of money.
Time is not on your side. Just calculate the number of years left for your retirement. As a child you were a dependant. You consumed what the others in your society produced. Once again you become a dependant when you are old. You so far had education, healthcare, transport, food, shelter, roads and infrastructure made by someone else for you. Do you really believe that you deserve to receive these form others for no contribution whatsoever from you? Do not be unfair. At least one must be proud of himself for not being in debt the community. Now is the time for you to re-pay your debt to the society. Make the best out of your productive life.
Let us see how we spend time. One day I asked Terrance (One of my employees) to tell me as to how he spends his day. This was his reply. He spends 90 minutes of his time attending to toilet needs, 25 minutes having tea, 70 minutes having meals, 35 minutes dressing and ironing, 60 minutes watching TV, 240 minutes travelling and 450 minutes sleeping. His working time is little less than 8 hours. He is 45 years old. He has 15 more years to his retirement. This means 5,475 days or 131,400 hours left. Now let us subtract the number of holidays form this. Sri Lankans generally enjoy 104 Saturdays and Sundays and approximately 20 other holidays for a year including poya. When you subtract the holydays, there will only be 241days or 5784 hours for a year remaining for Terrance to work. His productive time is only eight hours a day. This means during this 241 days his will work only 1928 hours. This means his total productive time will be only 28,920 hours or 1,205 full days for the entire 15 years. This is only 3 years and 3 months and 3 weeks.
I want you to do an exercise. Take a piece of paper and write down the work you perform with the time you spend to do each task. Be honest to yourself. You will be ashamed to see the result. Out of the 8 hours of work, the actual productive time is unbelievably so little. At the end of the day it is only the output or the actual work done what generates value and pays you and not the time spent. We all spend time since birth. But, how we spent our time has decided our place today in society. Similarly, what we deserve to get tomorrow is simply determined by what we do today.
“The wise man who is heedful among the heedless, awake among the sleepy, leaves behind the heedless even as a swift horse runs past a week horse.” – Dhammapada - Chapter on Heedfulness (Appamada Vaggo)
Stone or clay does not have considerable value unless a sculptor changes its original form and creates an invaluable piece of art. Time is just like stone or clay neglected and unnoticed by many. Are you the great sculptor who will create an invaluable masterpiece?
“The fame of him who strives (after perfection), is mindful, is pure in deed, considerate, is restrained, righteous and heedful, spreads far and wide.” - Dhammapada - Chapter on Heedfulness (Appamada Vaggo)
You do not need to be a genius with brilliant intelligence to achieve success in life. The world is full of bright people who are unsuccessful. All what you need is an ordinary intelligence and an extraordinary commitment and perseverance to succeed.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
________________________
by Bimsara Gamage
(June 24, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) What is the definition for time? Why do we need to worry about time so much? What implications could time have on our lives if we take time very lightly? I have been trying to understand.
Firstly, time is a part of existence. Some one can ask you –“How old are you?” In reply you got to tell the duration of your existence in number of years. Probably you will say that you are 35 years old. A year is a measurement to time. Once this year is broken in to fractions, you will know exactly how many months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds we so far existed or lived in this world.
Unlike most other animals, we live or spend a good part of time in childhood mastering the art of living. In other words we spend time subjecting ourselves to a formal and informal education that will align and formulate our learning and experience. Generally it is considered that you spend 18 years (216 months, 936 weeks, 6,570 days, 157,680 hours, 9,460,800 minutes or 567,648,000 seconds) before becoming an adult-the age you will legally be permitted to be independent and make decisions to spend your time on your own. However, you will be actually entering the adulthood after your education in another two to four years time. For an example if you consider that you start working at the age of 22 years, you will have 38 years more for your retirement at 60. It is a lot of time. (456 months, 1,976 weeks, 13,870 days, 832,200 hours, 49,932,000 minutes or 2,995,920,000 seconds).
We need a specific time to get results form certain activity. We have no control over some of these things. For an example a paddy cultivator needs altogether 4 months to complete one cycle of cultivation. Out of this period one month is spent in preparation of the field. Provided water is available on time, sometimes he will be able to reduce this one month to one week by use of more efficient methodology such as machinery, more manpower or even more number of hours for a day. However he will absolutely have no control over the process of time taken for the maturating of the plant and the grain. This example will show us while some elements of time are in our control and some are not. What is in your control needs to be managed well to get better results.
If you take a house builder as our next example, one can say that it takes nine months to complete a 1000sqft house. Another builder may complete the same with in three months. Whether you spend three months or nine months, the process of work involved in building is the same. Quantities used will be the same. Number of labour hours spent also could be more or less the same. The builder who takes nine months will have additional overheads such as supervisory costs, travelling costs, capital costs and his living expenses etc. spanning over the additional period of six months as well. Whereas the builder who takes only three months may be capable of settling the capital costs early and earn three times of profits that of the other builder within nine months by completing two more houses with same overheads.
Since I understand this, I strongly disagree with the old saying that “Time is as precious as gold”. Instead I say “The time is invaluable and more precious than gold”. Why do I say this? Gold will have one specific value depending on its purity and weight. Nevertheless the value of time can only be determined depending on who handles it. All men and women do have 24hours for a day. 365 days for one year. Take notice of your neighbours, relations, friends, classmates and acquaintances who have had the same 24 hours a day during the past few years same as you had. Can you be happy about the way you have added value to your day?
“The foolish ignorant folk spend their time unprofitably, heedless of perfection. The wise man guards heedfulness as his greatest treasure” – Dhammapada - Chapter on Heedfulness (Appamada Vaggo)
Time is money
This is the basic principal that differentiates the rich from the poor. In a simple explanation, we can call a person who makes Rs. 5,000.00 a day as rich. The man who earns the same amount in one month is called poor. No one can be successful unless you keep on adding value to every second you exist, every minute you pass, every hour you spend and every day you live. If you want to achieve some task in life in two years from now, start adding necessary vales to your time and bring about the changes needed to your life now itself. You cannot wait till the 23rd month to start off. You must fragment your task to a monthly target and then to a weekly target, a daily target and finally to an hourly target. You must introduce the changes you need to have in your life also the same way. You must daily assess whether you are adequately adding value to your time and consciously effecting at least a fraction of the change you finally want to have at the end of the period. If you spend your time unprofitably, you are wasting lot of money.
Time is not on your side. Just calculate the number of years left for your retirement. As a child you were a dependant. You consumed what the others in your society produced. Once again you become a dependant when you are old. You so far had education, healthcare, transport, food, shelter, roads and infrastructure made by someone else for you. Do you really believe that you deserve to receive these form others for no contribution whatsoever from you? Do not be unfair. At least one must be proud of himself for not being in debt the community. Now is the time for you to re-pay your debt to the society. Make the best out of your productive life.
Let us see how we spend time. One day I asked Terrance (One of my employees) to tell me as to how he spends his day. This was his reply. He spends 90 minutes of his time attending to toilet needs, 25 minutes having tea, 70 minutes having meals, 35 minutes dressing and ironing, 60 minutes watching TV, 240 minutes travelling and 450 minutes sleeping. His working time is little less than 8 hours. He is 45 years old. He has 15 more years to his retirement. This means 5,475 days or 131,400 hours left. Now let us subtract the number of holidays form this. Sri Lankans generally enjoy 104 Saturdays and Sundays and approximately 20 other holidays for a year including poya. When you subtract the holydays, there will only be 241days or 5784 hours for a year remaining for Terrance to work. His productive time is only eight hours a day. This means during this 241 days his will work only 1928 hours. This means his total productive time will be only 28,920 hours or 1,205 full days for the entire 15 years. This is only 3 years and 3 months and 3 weeks.
I want you to do an exercise. Take a piece of paper and write down the work you perform with the time you spend to do each task. Be honest to yourself. You will be ashamed to see the result. Out of the 8 hours of work, the actual productive time is unbelievably so little. At the end of the day it is only the output or the actual work done what generates value and pays you and not the time spent. We all spend time since birth. But, how we spent our time has decided our place today in society. Similarly, what we deserve to get tomorrow is simply determined by what we do today.
“The wise man who is heedful among the heedless, awake among the sleepy, leaves behind the heedless even as a swift horse runs past a week horse.” – Dhammapada - Chapter on Heedfulness (Appamada Vaggo)
Stone or clay does not have considerable value unless a sculptor changes its original form and creates an invaluable piece of art. Time is just like stone or clay neglected and unnoticed by many. Are you the great sculptor who will create an invaluable masterpiece?
“The fame of him who strives (after perfection), is mindful, is pure in deed, considerate, is restrained, righteous and heedful, spreads far and wide.” - Dhammapada - Chapter on Heedfulness (Appamada Vaggo)
You do not need to be a genius with brilliant intelligence to achieve success in life. The world is full of bright people who are unsuccessful. All what you need is an ordinary intelligence and an extraordinary commitment and perseverance to succeed.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
You imply that value is measured in a monetary sense - I have no idea how old you are... but you have a lot to learn. Time to get cracking...
Read the original article at www.lankajournal.org
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