Abid Iqbal Khari’s

Time is precious, time is sweet,
Time flies by on Hermes feet.

The ode is long, an epic too,
Ballads and sonnets cause much to do;
What should a muse therefore try
To please the ear and catch the eye?
A Rubia, perhaps, the thing for you
Or even better, try Haiku.

Time is precious, time does fly,
Time stops not until we die.

Poem by MILL FIELD

You cannot own it, but you can use it. You cannot store it but you can spend it. Once you lost it, you can never get it back with you.

While at the park one day, a woman sat down next to a man on a bench near a playground.

“That’s my son over there,” she said, pointing to a little boy in a red sweater who was gliding down the slide.

“He’s a fine looking boy” the man said. “That’s my daughter on the bike in the white dress.”

Then, looking at his watch, he called to his daughter. “What do you say we go, Maria?”

Maria pleaded, “Just five more minutes, Dad. Please? Just five more minutes.”

The man nodded and Maria continued to ride her bike to her heart’s content. Minutes passed and the father stood and called again to his daughter. “Time to go now?”

Again Maria pleaded, “Five more minutes, Dad. Just five more minutes.”

The man smiled and said, “OK.”

“You certainly are a patient father,” the woman exclaimed.

The man smiled and then said, “Her older brother Tommy was killed by a drunk driver last year while he was riding his bike near here. I never spent much time with Tommy and now I’d give anything for just five more minutes with him. I’ve vowed not to make the same mistake with Maria.

She thinks she has five more minutes to ride her bike. The truth is, I get Five more minutes to watch her play.”

We can learn many lessons out of this short story but the three obvious ones are:

1 - Life is all about making priorities, what are your priorities?

2 - Give someone you love 5 more minutes of your time today! This will give you more pleasure and peace of mind.

3 - This little story gives us another lesson too and that is ‘Change Your Lens, Change Your World’. The man acts in lieu of reacting. He does not annoy when his daughter asks for five more minutes. The truth is, when your mind or thinking pattern is in your control, nothing can give you tension, anger or anxiety.

I have observed many time wasters that will really eat into your time if you allow them to. To free up your time you need to be aware of those time wasters, decide what you want to do about them and then take the right action.
I can identify so many time wasters but, here, let me quote just 3 of them which are wasting time of people of almost all ages in our society. For each item, I suggest you ask yourself the question, “In what way does this waste my time?” Then think about the remedy you can apply to help your time be safe and effective.
TV - We waste much of our time in just wandering around the channels to find a good one. Many times, we just keep on watching TV for the sake of nothing.
SMS - I have seen many people wasting their lot of precious time while just going through SMS they receive from other people. To take it other way around, I would say they are letting other people eat into their time. What I do, I never read SMS completely if it does come from non-serious guys. Secondly I never forward a joke or useless verse to others so that they should not bother about it.
Cricket - I cannot help naming it Koora Krket on account of its being harmful for our people. I have seen people who go mad after it. They just not realize how they are wasting their time for a thing which is just a game and nothing else.

Amir Bin Qais was a great sholar. A person asked him to sit with him so that they would had some chatting (Gup Shup). Amir replied, ‘If you want me do it, then stop the sun’. He meant that time was running out and as they could not stop that, why should they waste time. The following Arabic verses also state the same sense.

I have seen the people who are at home. In a real sense they are in journey but they are not aware of it. We are in world as the passengers of a boat. We deem it as though it is static but time is taking us with him.

You say you will do it tomorrow because you dont have a good mood to do this work today. Because it is very hot today. Because of this and that thing you put it off for tomorrow. But these are only lame excuses. That ‘Tomorrow’ will never come but angel of death will arrive to take you with him. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Its your procrastination that compels you to postpone your important things. There is no such word as ‘tomorrow’ in the dictionary of wise men but it is only found in the registers of fools.

“Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”-Napoleon Hill
We do not achieve many of our targets of our career and life because we never start our work. We loose our heart even before starting a project. We forget that our responsibility is just to take the first step. We do not trust in God who is there to help us out as we go along. To achieve our destiny is not our responsibility. Ours is to to only keep trying.

A friend told me he had read this message written on a Japanese bus stop: ‘Only buses stop here. Not your time. So keep walking towards your goal’. I would even add some more words to this worthy statement. As it is rightly said, ‘Nothing in this world is constant except change’. Every thing is on a move. So if a thing stops, he no more survives in the scheme of this universe. Only those succeed who not only keep moving but also keep up with the pace of those who are succeeding. Success is a journey, not a destination. Keep moving, keep making progress. Keep upgrading yourself, your skills, your personality and your success is guaranteed.

C. S. Lewis said about the importance of time, ‘The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.’ He said very right that your success and future all depends upon what you are doing with your 60 minutes of every hour, the time which you has been  bestowed upon you. Either you are killing the time or time is killing you.

Pace yourself…an elephant can be swallowed, one bite at a time. And there is also another famous proverb, ‘penny and penny make many’. In urdu we use a proverb which means that a lot of drops together make an ocean. These proverbs and sayings can be applied not only on time management but on many aspects of our lives. For instance, if we have to overcome negativity in our society or we have to be a greater state. We have to take the first step and start our journey and a day will come ‘insha Allah’ when we would have achieved our goal. An Arabic poet says:

Here, I am giving few tips we can use to save time while doing our daily chores.
1- While you are in driving and stuck in a traffic jam or stop on signal which takes more than a minute, you can make a necessary phone call, or listen to motivational audio, read at least half of the page of a book or use your handy diary to learn something by heart.
2- I always keep a handy diary with me in which I write quotes, verses, difficult English words with their pronunciation and meaning, formulas of my subjects in MS and poems etc which I want to learn by heart. I refer to this hand diary while driving, while I am standing at a traffic signal, while I am sitting in a doctor’s clinic waiting for my turn, while I am in journey, while I am waiting for my wife whom I have brought to bazaar for shopping and I am sitting in the car.
3- Avoid making meetings to settle down things which you can settle only on the phone calls. Make meetings only when it is really worth while to see them one on one and you find it too hard to manage things the other way around.
4- Sometimes, when a task can be completed in an hour, we give it more time just because we think it will take long time. Otherwise, time is like a spring, we can compress it or pull it as we need. An Urdu poet has rightly said:

Take time to laugh, it is the music of the soul.
Take time to think, it is the source of perpetual youth.
Take time to read, it is the fountain of wisdom.
Take time to pray, it is the greatest power on earth.
Take time to love and be loved, it is a God-given privilege.
Take time to be friendly, it is the road to happiness.
Take time to give, it is too short a day to be selfish.
Take time to work hard, it is the price of success. (ANONYMOUS)