525,600

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life.

Comes to us at midnight, clean. It's perfect when you put it in our hands.

He hopes we learned something from yesterday.”

John Wayne

Question time! Do you know how many minutes and seconds are in a day? One week? And a year? Strange question? Yes and no.

There are 525,600 minutes in a year. You and I and anyone on this planet receive a priceless gift daily. Your name is time. Each day of our lives is gifted with 24 hours of this intangible item, for us to use as we see fit. Whether you are rich or poor, young or old, smart or not, white, brown, yellow or polka-dotted, we all get the same daily allowance: twenty-four hours. It's an equal division.

It seems that our lives revolve around time, one way or another. Every second that encapsulates your life makes up you, from your first breath to your last breath. This hourglass runs until its time runs out, thus ending the game of life. Your life, after all, is the total result of how you spend your time.

Many people believe that there is an accounting when the game is over. This accounting tabulates the result of what you have done with your life. Were you part of the solution or the problem? Minimized or exacerbated the challenges? In the final accounting, assets, status and bank balances do not count. The only relevant thing is the way you chose to use the time you were given.

You have exactly the time allotted to you, no more, no less. As the saying goes, “use it or lose it”. Since your life is the sum total of choices regarding the use of time, it stands to reason that the level of success you achieve in life will directly depend on how wisely you spend your time.

Most of us can look around and find memories of good intentions. We readily see things we never get to do in order to achieve a goal. That treadmill or exercise bike is dusty. The piano, whose purpose was to fulfill our musical dreams, remains silent.

The books piled up on the nightstand waiting to be read. Since lost time never comes back, now is the best time to do the things that are important to you. As the poet Horacio said, “Seize the day!”.

Time is as valuable as money because it is limited; we get a finite amount of it.

If you waste time or waste time, are you broke, just as you would be wasting, losing, or mismanaging your finances? Time is free, you don't have time debt as you have financial debt. You cannot multiply it; it neither inflates nor deflates. Wasted or wasted time can be a contributing factor to monetary concern, but it won't be on your checking account or inventory statement.

If you kill time, are you considered a criminal? Can you be arrested for misusing this intangible asset? Can you be sentenced for your crime? Will you have to serve less time for good behavior? You can borrow tomorrow's hours to use today, how can you borrow money on account of tomorrow's earnings? You can transfer your time allowance, saying, "Will I do this when I have more time?" You will never have more time. Time is not like money; time is more cunning and more precious than money. Time can only be spent, and once spent it can never be recovered.

Time is like the concrete that goes around in the mixer. The concrete is only a potential, until the worker opens the reservoir and puts it in a form so that it has some use. Wasted time is like concrete that is never used, or that is taken out but not put into form. We can only grow if we learn to shape our lives within the limits of time, because it is only by properly using time that we can gain control over ourselves.

One of the best ways to shape our time is to set long-term and short-term goals. What do we want to achieve? What steps should we take today to fulfill tomorrow's goal? Use every minute because if you don't, you will lose it! And the time you waste today will be lost forever.

Daniel Luz is Human Resources Director at Miranos and a columnist for Gente Mais.