Don't waste your time, since life is made of it.

Personally I am proud to consider past, present and future time as a whole continuum.
Carl William Brown

We all run on two clocks. One is the outside clock, which ticks away our decades and brings us ceaselessly to the dry season. The other is the inside clock, where you are your own timekeeper and determine your own chronology, your own internal weather and your own rate of living. Sometimes the inner clock runs itself out long before the outer one, and you see a dead man going through the motions of living.
Max Lerner

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence — neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish — it is an imponderably valuable gift. Each of us has a few minutes a day or a few hours a week which we could donate to an old folks home or a children’s hospital ward. The elderly whose pillows we plump or whose water pitchers we refill may or may not thank us for our gift, but the gift is upholding the foundation of the universe.
Maya Angelou

Everything requires time. It is the only truly universal condition. All work takes place in time and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable, and necessary resource. Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.
Peter F. Drucker

There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of Spring without the fear that after them may come no Summer. It does come. I learn it daily, learn it with pain, to which I am grateful…
Rainer Maria Rilke

Every morning you are handed 24 golden hours. They are one of the few things in this world that you get free of charge. If you had all the money in the world, you couldn’t buy an extra hour. What will you do with this priceless treasure? Remember, you must use it, as it is given only once. Once wasted you cannot get it back.
Author Unknown

If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made of.
Bruce Lee

Time is invisible, so it’s easy to spend. It’s only near the end of our life that most of us will realize the value of time. Make sure you’re not too busy to pay attention to life.
Shane Parrish

Time: more than a good doctor or a gentleman, it is a great punter, perhaps a pimp and a hooker; as for the wounds, if they are not mortal they constitute the pride of the samurai, if they are mortal it is even better because the true warrior like the sage is always ready to leave; finally for the pain, it is a divine sign, it approaches us to God, metaphorically speaking; concluding, what happens to you is the best that could probably happen, so the best time is the current one, also because it is the only one that exists, last but not least, in a while we’ll be disappeared, therefore get ready.
Carl William Brown

Time will also be a luxury but, if you don’t have much money, days are too few and counted.
Carl William Brown

The Roman philosopher Seneca said it well in a letter to Paulinus:

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.

I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: “The part of life we really live is small.” For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time. Vices beset us and surround us on every side, and they do not permit us to rise anew and lift up our eyes for the discernment of truth, but they keep us down when once they have overwhelmed us and we are chained to lust. Their victims are never allowed to return to their true selves; if ever they chance to find some release, like the waters of the deep sea which continue to heave even after the storm is past, they are tossed about and no rest from their lusts abides.

In life and business, the people we admire are often the ones who have firm control over their time. Rarely are they wasting a moment, and if they find themselves wasting it, they adjust quickly.

Time is one of the most under-appreciated models that we all encounter, and yet it’s the most ubiquitous. When employed correctly, wise use of time becomes an amplifier of our life satisfaction. When spent without consideration, it becomes a persistent source of regret.

Here are four examples of how we misunderstand time.

First, take productivity. We actually don’t want to be more productive. What we really want is more time. And yet because we don’t properly value time, we never end up with more; even when we find ways to work more efficiently, we don’t actually use it wisely. We simply layer in more work.

Second, consider investing in learning. The upfront costs are real and visible and, like any investment, the future payoff is uncertain. So we tend to skim the surface, thinking this will “save us time” versus doing the real work. Yet this surface-based approach leads to no improvement in our ability to make decisions. In fact, it may harm us if we think we’ve learned something for real. Thus, surface learning is a true waste of time. It’s just that the link to our bad learning is unclear, so we rarely identify the root cause.

Third, let’s look at relationships. We’re often too “busy” to spend time with the ones we care about. The very parent at the park playing on his iPhone while his children run around playing and laughing is the same one, who, when you fast-forward the axis of time, wants those precious moments back. Likewise, the “busy” 30-something who can’t make time to see their parents wishes to have them back after they’re gone. They wish for more time with them.

Finally, we have meetings. Meetings are part of how many of us earn a living. Often, however, they’re poorly organized and poorly run. Lacking an agenda or decision, they become nothing more than half-meeting half-gossip session. A giant waste of time.