No Time Like The Present

“All men are created equal.”  Some people think that is a fine sentiment; some people think that is a bald-faced lie.  But in one sense, it is an absolute, immutable law of nature: in the sense that, for each and every single day, each and every single one of us gets exactly 24 hours — 1440 minutes — 88640 seconds to spend.  Now if I were to add “exactly how we wished”, that would be a lie, but unless we are imprisoned or enslaved, we generally do have some say over how we spend those minutes.  So the question becomes, how do we live on 24 hours a day?  Because no matter how rich we are, we can’t buy ourselves another second personally, the best we can to is give someone money to spend their time doing what we want them to do.  And no matter how poor we are, we all still get the same allotment of minutes every day, even if some of our options of what to do with them are limited.

One thing we can do to make the most of our time is to learn things while we are waiting for others.  Audiobooks and podcasts can be a great option, as MP3 players are small enough to carry with you everywhere and can be purchased very inexpensively.  And if we have a smartphone, we don’t even need a separate piece of equipment.  Many podcasts are available for free; audiobooks can get expensive, but one way you can get them for free is if the author has been dead for a century.  Arnold Bennett wrote a book to answer the question of How to Live on 24 hours a Day and the folks at Librivox have made it available for free.  The language may be a bit stilted to our modern ears, but the knowledge contained therein still has relevance to today’s world.