Time is your most valuable asset. As Thomas Edison said, “Time is really the only capital that any human being has and the thing that he can least afford to waste or lose.” While time appears at first to be a simple concept — everyone knows what it is, right? — the more carefully you look at it the more complex, ambiguous, mysterious and paradoxical it seems. Today let me expand your perspectives on time. Allow me to confuse you and invite you to reflect on some thought-provoking questions about time and your relationship to it. These questions don’t have “right” answers — what’s right is what’s right for you.

Time is absolute

Time is divided into discrete units that we can track and measure. Sixty seconds make a minute, sixty minutes add up to an hour, 24 hours make a day, seven days make a week, 52 weeks make a year, and so on. We use clocks to measure time in business, and in sports.

For example, when I was a serious middle-distance track runner, I once made the qualification time for the German championship finals by 1/100th of a second. This was only one month after I had failed to qualify by 8/100th of a second. Can you imagine how significant that tiny difference in time was for me?

Looking at life and business while thinking of time as an absolute, our concern is how to get the best results during a period of time, how to manage time most effectively, how to get the most out of a day, an hour, or even 10 minutes. IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad said, “You can do so much in 10 minutes’ time. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. Divide your life into 10-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.”

Absolute time questions:

• What’s your approach to get more out of your most valuable asset?

• Do clocks rule your life? Do you manage, and try to optimize, your time? Do you constantly measure time? Are you a slave to your watch?

Time is relative

Consider two lengths of time: one minute, and one second. Which one is longer? While the answer is obvious in absolute terms, things become more complex if we look at time in a relative way. If your hand is pressed to a red-hot steel plate, one second is painfully long. On the other hand, if you have only one minute to pitch your business idea to a potential investor, then that minute will fly by.

Even the same event and the same time interval can have different relative time for different people. Imagine a World Cup final where your team leads by one goal, and after 90 minutes, the referee signals that 5 minutes of injury time is to be added. Those five minutes will seem like an eternity for you, while they will seem all too short to fans of the opposing team.

Relative time questions:

• What can you learn from the relative nature of time?

• How might speeding up or slowing down things in your life positively impact your productivity and happiness?

• What situations or activities in your life should you speed up? Which should you slow down?

• How can you speed up or slow down your business to add more meaning or value to its stakeholders?

Time is final

One of the few certain things about time is that eventually time will run out for each of us. How much time do you have left until your appointment with death? You don’t know, nor do I. We can only be sure that it will happen.

Final time questions:

• How can you effectively manage your time if you don’t know how much time you have left?

• Given your limited but unknown quantity of time, how do you determine the value of that time?

• How do you look at deadlines given the existence of your final deadline?

Time is limited

In my studies of the lives of genius thinkers and creative business leaders, I noticed an interesting pattern. Fully aware of their mortality, most top achievers were concerned about producing the most meaning in the time that they had left. Thomas Edison said, “The only time I really become discouraged is when I think of all the things I would like to do and the little time I have in which to do them.” Similarly, Charles Darwin said, “A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.” And Steve Jobs said, “Your time is limited. Don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

These exceptional people became more aware of the relative nature of time the closer they came to their deaths. Thomas Edison said, “The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast.” Remembering this, ask yourself:

• Do you feel that time passes faster the older you get?

• How can you generate the most value from the limited time that you have?

• What do you want to do in your time to generate the most meaning and happiness?

• Are you wasting your time living someone else’s life?

Time is an illusion

Toward the end of his life, Albert Einstein believed that “the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.” Zen Buddhism emphasizes the concept of present moment awareness, i.e., to be fully present and to focus on what’s happening now instead of always remembering the past or living in the future. While there is surely a time for learning from a past mistake, or for envisioning or planning for the future, life happens now. So ask yourself:

• What if Einstein was right and time is an illusion?

• How can you make the best use of this moment?

• How can you be more present? What do you want to focus your attention on now?

• How much happiness do you get from what you’re doing now? How can what you’re doing now create long-term meaning?

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2012. This article was published in parallel in the Bangkok Post under the same title on 22 November 2012.