There is no one in the world who does not want to succeed. Everyone dreams big, but not everyone’s dreams come true — mainly because we have to do something to get anything. We all know this, but, if we look around us, we will find many people wasting their time on social media, watching films, sleeping, fighting and what not. And all the things they spend their time on do not bring them any real meaningful benefit in return.

Then why do people waste time? Well, I think the actual reason is that people have become addicted to things that take up a lot of time and in return offer very little. And the sad part is that many don’t even realise that they have achieved very little, or of no value, in the time they have spent, which is why it is considered as wasted time.

Imagine that you wake up every day with Rs86,400 in your bank account and you are told that at the end of the night, it will all be gone whether you spend it or not. So obviously we will use it to buy things that are useful to us.

But when everyday 86,400 seconds are deposited into our life’s account, we waste them despite knowing that whether we utilise it or not, at the end of the day, they will all be gone. So, we would never waste time if it was money. I wish we could understand that time is more precious than money because we can earn money by giving our time, but despite spending billions and trillions of rupees, we can never even bring back a second that has passed.

To realise the value of one year, ask a student who failed a grade; to realise the value of one month, ask a sportsman who can’t play for a month due to injury and misses an important tournament; to realise the value of one week, ask a person who has to quarantine for a week away from his loved ones and work; to realise the value of one hour, ask those who have an hour of load shedding daily in summers; to realise the value of one minute, ask the person who arrives a minute after their loved one passes away; to realise the value of one second, ask the person who is in a hurry and traffic light turns red; and to realise the value of a millisecond, ask the person who comes second in an Olympic race.

Both time and a teacher teach us things, but the only difference is that the teacher teaches first and then takes the exam, and time first takes the exam and then teaches. That is why it is said people who understand time are lucky. Often it happens that when there is time, people don’t understand its value and when they understand what they could have done with the time they had, it has already passed.

Many people can be heard saying, “I wish I had more time”, but the fact is that those who really want to do something can also do it in 24 hours and those who don’t want to do anything, even if you give them 26 hours instead of 24, they won’t be able to do much.

God has given equal time to everyone, the same 24 hours in a day. The difference lies in how people utilise this time.

Thomas Edison invented the bulb, Jack Ma founded the world’s largest retailer and e-commerce company Ali Baba and countless others were able to accomplish much in the time they had. Then why are others running out of time?

The truth is that we lack time management, not time. No doubt, time flies, but we are the pilot who fly it. The control of time is in our own hands.

There are many people who put off today’s work for tomorrow, but why do they forget that we don’t know what will happen in the next moment.

A friend of mine has this habit of putting off things that she has to do. I used to explain to her that it was not the right attitude, but she always ignored my advice.

Once the annual sports day was going to take place in our school. We were asked to get our school’s specific sports costume and wear it on that day.

I bought the sports costume 10 days before the sports day and told my best friend too, but she felt that there was lots of time left and she would do it later.

So the day before the sports day, when she went to the shop to get the uniform, they didn’t have any left in her size. Without the uniform, she could not participate in the sports day events.

That day she learnt a very important lesson that we should never delay any work. This is just an example of the kind of problems that are caused by delaying work, and the problems can be far more serious than this.

Our leader Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah has also advised us said to do tomorrow’s work today and today’s work now. These are simple, but very meaningful words. And, since childhood we have been hearing that an empty mind is the devil’s workshop, so if you get into the habit of sitting free with an empty mind from a young age, then as you grow up you will not manage your time well and be capable of doing work efficiently. If you are done with all your work and are free, instead of passing your time idly, you can exercise or paint, read a book, watch a good documentary, etc. That way you will be utilising your time meaningfully.

Those who really want their dreams to come true, they value every second of their time and use it in the most efficient way. The purpose of life is not that we just came into the world, ate, drink, have fun and then die. Allah has given us life for a purpose, we need to use it properly. So, stop wasting time, because time will bless the wise and punish the lazy.

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 27th, 2021