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Jatanlal Rampuria
Honour the time
The bounties of nature are immense. They are really immeasurable. The life, the life-like earth, the life-like sky & the wonderful contrasts occupying all these - contrasts of the corpulent & the sublime of the moving & the static of the mystic & the manifest. All so fascinating and so beautifully laid in perfect harmony with no chaos, confusion or conflict in between.
There is however one thing the nature has been miser in blessing the man with and that is time. The scarcest thing at man's disposal is time. Yet he spends it most prodigally & most wastefully. What is still more unfortunate is that most of us do not even realise how unwisely and unknowingly we allow it to slip out of our hands unutilised.
Kay Lyons has said, "Yesterday is a cancelled cheque, tomorrow is a promissory note, today is the only cash you have". The only day of any importance in one's life is today. Tomorrow is a tricky illusion. The promises of tomorrow are seldom whole-hearted. Let us therefore sit today. Today itself to make ourselves available to learn from the experiences & expressions of the wise who thought of time as a priceless possession & who saw it passing fast & based on their this realisation who learned to command it.
Time is something whole. Management of time is, therefore, management of the whole. Time management is, in fact, self-management, is career-management and, in one word, is life management. It simply means installing a regulator in life to strike a blance in all its manifestaiotns -
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emotional, behavioural and functional. One cannot develop his faculties and make use of his potentialities without effectively managing time.
Cure is possible only after diagnosing the disease. "I am horribly busy" or "I did not get time" - such claims are often an unconscious admission of inability and lack of competence. It is basic, therefore, to first realise where we lack and where we fitter away the time. The problem starts when we become unconsious of the fact that a day consists of twenty four hours and not of eight-hours which he spend on our prime job. What happens to the other sixteen hours daily? Assuming that one requires eight hours sleep and another 4 hours for eating, dressing moving to and form etc. we have still four hours in hand left daily. To this may be added another 8 hours each of Sunday and other holidays. Just a little calculation and we will be surprised to know that hours of spare time in a week is just equal or sometimes more than the time we spend on our job proper.
A very valid argument obstructs our way here. One needs rest & relaxation. Recreational pastimes, reading newspapers & magazines and accommodating social calls also demand their dues. Remaining indifferent to the obligations of hospitality is also not easy. When to do all this if there is no spare time? This is perfectly right. But we have only to pause and think whether we are rightly using our time in these pursuits. Relaxation should not be confused with idleness. It means relieving tension. We can make the work itself a source of relieving tension, if we develop a fondness for the job in hand and do it with full interest. In recreational pastimes playing badmintion or tennis for an hour should be preferred to watching the day long cricket match. Likewise, playing a musical instrument for an hour is better than viewing a 3 hour film and so also is walking half-an hour in the garden or the on the beach than just sitting one hour there.
Light material magazines & newspapers are produced with rapidity and should be read with rapidity. Newspapers can be glanced through in lunch interludes or while waiting for something or in other blank periods. It is unfruitful to remain gluded to them for hours at a stretch. At social functions we should try to meet with experienced and learned persons. Discoursing and exchanging views with such persons is quite a gainful employment of time. Hospitability also does not mean observing long formalities and allowing the visitor to steal our time as he wishes. It is not just wise to always stand on ceremonies.
Six, seven or eight spare hours a day is an enormous time. But it is melted away commonly in excessive sleep, engaging in petty works which could well be delegated to others, waiting for the tea to arrive offered unnecessarily to a visitor dropping in jsut for nothing, gossiping on no-sense subjects, playing cards, flirting with a magazine or sometimes
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