Growing up, being a millionaire was everyone's ambition as there weren't that many around. Now people snort at millions, with the Times Rich List featuring billionaires and governments talk about trillions.
To put things into context 1 million seconds is 12 days, a billion seconds is 31 years and a trillion 31,688 years, which probably explains the fixation of a billion and trillion.
As January kicked off, having had a wonderful Christmas and New Year celebrating with the family and friends, alongside getting the work balance right, Time Management sprung to mind. It’s odd how many people and organisations are fixated on managing time, which is impossible to do. Time will run regardless, the seconds, minutes and hours pass; it is what we do with our time that is important.
Working with a young and dynamic team spread across the world, effective and regular communication is critical and our weekly and daily updates have helped my organisations grow. These are the skills that we deliver through the PIE Charity which I helped establish six years ago within a school in Walker which has now grown to become the largest enterprise and STEM focused charity within the North East and the only one delivering formal vocational qualifications to primary aged pupils.
We focus on areas where children are less advantaged, helping them understand, appreciate and develop the key skills that will help these young people succeed in life. Making money shouldn’t be seen as a dirty word, as it gives people options, and we need to encourage young people to become the best they can be, through positive role modelling and business engagement. The support from local and regional organisations has been overwhelming as they see the difference our charity makes.
A regular comment from the pupils during the enterprise activities that the children participate in within school is how fast time flies, as they are having fun and learning real life skills. This clearly relates to the fact when Einstein was asked to explain his theory of relativity in simple terms, Einstein replied, “sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.” Or, alternatively as Sunil Bali says, “The length of a minute depends on which side of the bathroom door you are.”
Time tends to increase or decrease depending how conscious you are of it.
When you’re feeling stressed, time goes slowly, but when you’re in the moment, loving life with a lightness of being, then you seem to have all the time you need…you look at your watch and what seemed like magic moments and minutes, turn out to be happy hours and delightful days.
The ancient Greeks had two different words for time:
Chronos – this is calendar time. Seconds, minutes, hours and days
Kairos – this literally means, “when the time is right”
Most of us wear chronometers (watches). But what if we wore kairometers instead which tapped into our heart, our gut and our soul, so we took the right action at the right time. To eat only when we’re hungry, to rest whenever we’re tired, and to take the action that our intuition is nudging us to take. Time is a bit like the wind, it lifts the light and leaves the heavy.
So make sure you do the light thing.
