THE ONLY COIN
Poet Carl Sandburg once pointed out, “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”
There is a multiplicity of methods and products that are supposed to help you manage your time. The problem with most of them is they don’t work all that well any more as our world speeds up and our to-do lists grow exponentially.
Self-discipline strategist Rory Vaden’s counter-intuitive thoughts on time management is explained in the following TEDx Douglasville talk, “How to Multiply Your Time.”
The book Vaden mentions in his video is one he wrote. The name of the book is PROCRASTINATE ON PURPOSE: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time. It came out in January, 2015 and it was an instant national bestseller.
Here’s a poem:
MONEY, TIME, FREEDOM…UMMM….
People tell me
Money buys time and
Money buys freedom
And that is why
(Or so people tell me)
They spend all their time
Pretending to be those wild cowboys,
Those rodeo “champeens,”
Chasing money down
And wrestling it to the ground
To the cheers from the assembled fans…
Which is sort of peculiar to me
Since in real rodeos
Those wild bulls don’t ever
Seem to do anything
‘Cept stay wild
So those cowboys can go on
Chasing them down and
Wrestling them to the ground
As the fans go mad.
Hmmm.
People tell me
They spend all their time
Locked in step with
All the others
In this ticktock world
Chasing down elusive bits of
Specially printed paper
That flutter in the wind,
Moving away…always away.
They tell me
They have no time for freedom right now
Because they’re wrapped around
In the chains of their commitments and obligations
That depend on their presence at all times
Overseeing all this herding of money.
Corralling all those cash cows.
Hmmm.
There are whole libraries
Of books about money –
How it talks and what it says,
How it moves inside your head,
How it grows and what it knows,
How it flies and how it dies.
It sure takes a lot of time
To learn about money.
It takes up lifetimes.
All this stuff generates a lot of head-scratching,
A lot of movement and activity.
There are whole colleges full of
Eager-beaver students
Learning ’bout money.
There are entire cities
Of people devoted to
Chasing and wrestling down money.
Wow.
Ummm….
I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta ask a stupid question:
This time and freedom that money is supposed to buy?
Who does it belong to?
By Netta Kanoho
Picture credit: Coins by Ruth Hartnup via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]
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18 thoughts on “THE ONLY COIN”
There are some fascinating insights here Netta. I have to say I really enjoy TED talks, and that Rory Vaden chat on multiplying our time really makes a lot of sense to me.
I would personally say that the more money we have then the easier it is for us to manage our time, because we have so much time to breathe and enjoy ourselves thanks to money.
Hey Marley…thanks for the visit and the comments. I’m glad you enjoyed the Vaden talk.
My jury’s still out on the thought that more money makes managing our time easier. From what I can see, having more money just makes the dance different. The important question, I suppose, is whether you like that dance better than the one you are doing.
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Interesting thoughts here my friend :). Time is really a very valuable asset and we should be careful how to use it. Thank you for this great reminder because it seems that every now and then I (and other people too) need a reminder on this subject. I believe that we all live eternally like the Bible teaches but this life (usually about 70-90 years on earth) decide how and where we are going to spend our eternity. In hell or in heaven.
I like to think also many times what is my purpose here. Why am I here? What will be left to the world when I leave? I want to leave something valuable that can help people to have a better life. What do you think about all of this? 🙂
Hey Roope: Thanks for the visit and for your comments. I did a post about those very questions, A Question or Two where I explore them my own self. You might like it. Please do come again….
Hey Netta,
thumbs up for a great post! I’m always interested in ways to spend my only coin, but I never have the time to truly explore them. I guess there’s much irony in that.
Your post made me stop for a second and take a look at my surroundings, I’m grateful for that.
In my opinion, time is always there, ready to perform the transactions we are able to do.
Its our energy and determination which closes the deal.
Having more money doesn’t make it easier to manage our time, It simply changes the
transactions we are able do with It.
Anyway, just throwing in my two cents,
JT
Hey JT: Thank you for the visit and your comments. Please do come again….
I loved your poem and “time” well spent is time you don’t regret losing.
I’m always on the lookout for good books about improving my time management and will check Rory’s book out. We all have such little time on this Earth and I like squeezing every second to make it count.
P.S. My Mom is an Australian Bush Ballad Poetress and she would be proud of you!
Thanks for the best ten minutes I’ve spent today.
Cheers, Jeff.
Jeff, thanks for your visit and for sharing your thoughts. (I love that your mom’s an Australian Bush Ballad Poetress. Cool title, that!)
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Time is certainly fleeting! It feels like it speeds up faster and faster every year. Milestones are what make the years count. I am definitely trying to spend my time wisely – spending time with loved ones and having new experiences. It’s interesting because time truly is relative. How I perceive the passing of time is different then others.
Sherry, thanks for your visit and for sharing your thoughts. I do agree with you. The older I get the faster time seems to go. Never figured out why that is….
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Hi there Netta…Well the life is not about money for sure, but money usually means freedom…the freedom not to waste your time just to gain money but to do what you trully like (but that’s nothing new:-)). We all know that money isn’t real in conclusion…its just made up to control and operate society… Anyway good topic, nice poem…worth thinking about. Take care!
Thanks for the visit and for sharing your thoughts, Michal. I do appreciate it. I’m glad you enjoyed the post.
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One of the most valuable, priceless thing on our life is TIME what it goes never come back, the clock is ticking and never ever stop, as we get older and older. On the other hands, money is also important and plays a big role in our life but money never ever can buy or stop the time. If we don’t use our time and manage it well we are wasting our time in useless things.
Thanks for the visit and for sharing your thoughts, abdft17. You’re right. Using our time wisely does seem to be the way to go, and even though money can be a major factor in our lives, we do need to make sure we spend our time well.
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Thanks for sharing your poem. This dimension of our lives which we call TIME has to be understood in order for us to make the most of it.
The strongest point for me in this article says that if you don’t manage your own time then others will manage it. For some of us, that is the story of our lives.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your interesting writing style.
Thanks for your visit, JJ. I am so glad you found the post interesting.
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We seem to spend a great deal of time trying to build a better relationship with money. Perhaps we should be spending more money building a better relationship with our time.
I was once told by a close friend that I had a bad relationship with money. I never really quite understood what she meant. I tried … but I gave up in the end.
The money we spend we can get back, maybe or maybe not, but time spent is gone. Maybe our time spent gets returned to us at the cosmic cocktail bar at the end of the universe when we look back and say to ourselves, there was another lifetime I spent thinking …. making money was important …. or some other worldly achievement meant something …. insert as appropriate.
And we can smile indulgently at ourselves. But as I say – or maybe not.
I agree, Andy.
Myself, I tend to spend more money building a better relationship with my time. Since both are just mind-constructs, I figure that humans can use them either way and it seems to me that more time to play my own way is the better deal than more money.
The money does seem to show up anyhow when I’m playing well in my time.
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