Photo Credit: Jean Chow
Black Friday is no ordinary Friday. Big box retailers like Amazon are having the “biggest ever Black Friday” starting one week in advance, of course. Although it’s Prime Time on Amazon, Warren Buffet, the highly successful investor, and us ordinary folks would be hard pressed to buy time. So “I better be careful with it (time). There is no way I will be able to buy more time”, Buffett cautioned his friend, Bill Gates, in their 2018 interview.
Billionaires, Gates and Richard Branson, believe we need to “schedule time to just dream and think freely.” As a non-billionaire, I schedule my dream time efficiently – while I am dreaming. Clarity comes often just before I open my eyes. Allowing our minds to rest and wander gives us access to creativity. Time gives us creativity.
I met Frank O’Dea, co-founder of Second Cup, in 2013 and again in 2018. His struggle with alcohol and abuse is remarkable in “When All you Have is Hope”. In “Do the Next Right Thing – Surviving Life’s Crises”, he outlined the need to:
- First find peace.
- Draw on a higher power.
- Do the next right thing.
Take the time. Time gives us peace.
I once envied youth for all the time they have ahead of them. I urged them to not waste one single second. Of course, they laughed at me. They have all the time in the world, don’t they? Apathy perhaps?
Comfortably past mid-life now, I no longer envy nor worry but watch with wonder the way youth race through life at Mach 9.6 speed. What will they do with all that time on their hands? More importantly, what will time give them? More opportunities? More wisdom, experience? More apathy? (surely not)
Will they meet new people #IRL (in real life)? Will they gain new perspectives by learning from others unlike them? Will they rise like Frank O’Dea when faced with unfathomable struggles? Time will tell.
I’ve met Sandra Shamas . When asked if she is a comedian, she says, “only if they laugh”. “My Boyfriend’s Back and There’s Going to be Laundry” was a big hit. We’re the same age. I borrowed a math “quiz” from her Show while making not too fine a point about the value of mentorship and experience. “How much time do we have left to live?” I had asked during a keynote for a bewildered group of aspiring entrepreneurs a few years ago.
We’ve got 30 years if our stars align properly. Sandra had asked: “What’s that in days?” 10,950 days, not a heck of lot. Try hours? 262,800 hours. Really? 15,768,000 minutes. 946,080,000 seconds, yep, that’s all we’ve got.
Looking back 30 years, I was the same age as they were that day. I asked them how many years separated us. 30 years. I then asked them to reflect on their lives so far and what they hoped to accomplish in the next 30 years. I asked them to think about how many more stories they would have to tell in another 30 years.
Then I shared with them a quote from Lubna Olayan now the first Chairwoman of a Saudi bank and one of the most powerful and influential women in the world according to TIME, Forbes, and Fortune. In “Fortune September 2015 , she said: “The more challenges you face in life, the more of life you experience – this lived experience gives one the “influence” to impact others’ lives.”
As mentors and mentees across the generations, we would make time to listen to understand one another instead of dismissing ourselves as Millennials and Boomers. We might learn something from one another that might help us save time. Anyone need more time?
Time gives us opportunities to share our experience and knowledge. Lifelong learning takes a long time, a life time. regardless of our age. Why not collaborate and co-create? Time is ticking so we best start now. #cometogether
