ON RELATING WITH TIME

St Augustine of Hippo observed in the 11^th book of his Confessions that time is elusive; you know it but when you try to grab hold of it, it eludes you. And so defining time, that is inscribing it within a boundary, is barely a possibility since it could be spoken of in the cosmological and phenomenological senses. The two senses are even complex in themselves.

Time is one thing we all fundamentally depend on because even our very life is not only measured but determined by it. The sacred pages render our lifespan as three scores and ten (70) for all and four scores (80) for the strong. It determines our productivity and sets a limit to our dreams since mortality (ability to die) is contained in the very notion of time as opposed to eternity, where time is immaterial and ageing nonexistent.

This discourse on time is coming against the backdrop that our generation is progressively losing the sense of time. We spend too much time on frivolities, spend little or no time on essentials and then spend the rest of the time regretting the outcome. And disaster is sure to strike in our after-school experience if we don’t urgently do something about it. The solution I am proffering is quite a simple one: grab time and manipulate it! I’ll explain.

What does the clock do? It tells time, isn’t it? Sure it does. Now, by walking your day under the guide of a time piece, you would most likely achieve more, wouldn’t you? You would I guess. So, the timepiece does for us one very important function – that of bringing time under our control with a view to effectiveness and productivity in contradistinction to what would have been difficult if we were working with the hitherto guide of dawn, noon, dusk and night – which our distant forebears depended on to tell time. But advocate more than merely working with time; I advocate for getting time totally under your control, and getting to a point where you can say: Time is wasting my time – because you have already programmed everything in advance. And this can only be possible when you arrive at the truism that speed is in the mind.

How to grab your time: A simple analysis will do. First, try to dissect what is this that we call time, which is calibrated into seconds, minutes, etc.

1 day = 86400 seconds, 1440 minutes, 24 hours.

1 week = 604800 seconds, 10080 minutes, 168 hours.

1 month = 30 or 31 days. Etc.

The reason for this calibration is so that the minutest unit is not spent without a meaningful purpose. In that way, every moment of your time gets to contribute meaningfully to your larger plan of action.

Secondly, work out how long it takes you to do the common things of life, and other things that feature on your daily routine. How long does it take you to wash your mouth? How long do you have to spend in the bathroom to come out clean? How long does it take you to make an average dish, wash your cloth, or clean the house? How long does it take you to get to class, or get to church? How long do you have to be in bed for a good night rest or siesta? If you know the ideal time it should take you to get along with those tasks, you wouldn’t be needing a soothsayer to tell you when you are wasting your time – your life! So that you can know, for instance, when you should set out to class instead of getting there either late or earlier than necessary.

Thirdly, you actually need to do some serious planning and scheduling. And you mustn’t always do for yourself what you can comfortably pay for (buying time) or have someone happily do for you. Plan, plan, and keep planning…