The Hourglass: Lessons on the Value of Time

The Hourglass: Lessons on the Value of Time

I love the sauna. It offers a chance to slow down, get away, and take time to reflect on life. All of this while you slowly get more and more uncomfortable as your body temperature rises and the minutes slowly tick by.  But here’s the reality: I often get into the sauna with a good plan and then after five minutes, I find myself questioning how long I stay in there.  So much for good intentions!

I’m travelling this week, so I was a guest at a new gym.  They have a nice sauna, so I sat down with my good intentions of twenty minutes of heat rising reflection. Immediately, I noticed there was no clock inside. Nor was there one I could see outside of the sauna through the steamy windows. It did, however, have an hourglass mounted on the wall that I’ve seen in other saunas before but never used them. I inspected further and saw what appeared to be 15 minutes of sand in it. I flipped the hourglass over and settled into my time of suffering in solitude.

After what seemed like five minutes, I checked out the hourglass and it looked like hardly any sand had fallen through to the bottom half. I tapped on it, thinking it was clogged up, and I noticed that it was in fact working. In that moment, time wasn’t moving fast enough for me as I grew more uncomfortable in what should have been my moments of reflection.

Then I thought of the old soap opera Days of Our Lives.  Anyone that knows that show, knows it’s famous line that plays at the beginning of each show: “Like sands through an hourglass, these are the days of our lives”.  When I was a kid growing up on the family farm, we would break for lunch at noon and pile into the house where my mom had prepared a spread for us. My brothers, sister, parents and I would all watch Days of Our Lives together. Technically, it was my mom’s show but we were all hooked.  To this day, they still use that opening line before every episode. I had never given it much thought until I was sitting in that sauna looking at that hourglass.

Suddenly, those little bits of sand had a new meaning to me.  If each sand pebble really represented a day in the passage of time, I could see the days flying by.  If the fifteen minutes of sand in that little tube represent the next fifteen years of my life (God willing), I was losing precious time just sitting there watching the sand drop to the bottom of the hourglass.  It made me think about how many days we waste, and we never get them back.  The fifteen years represented in this hourglass were quickly coming to an end, and I wanted more time.  How often do we say “time flies” as we talk about how fast the last month, year, or five years passed by? 

To me, this doesn’t mean we need to cram more things into each day to maximize each minute. For most of us, it’s cutting out the things that waste our time:  doom scrolling on our phones, TV, and saying “yes” to too many things.

Greg Scheinman, who wrote a great book called The Midlife Male, talked about his perspective on time when he joined me on my podcast.  His dad died when Greg was just a teenage, and his perspective on time is spot on:

“Time is the most valuable resource that we have. And it's the one thing that we can't make more of. So my perspective on it is to guard my time. Not to be guarded, but to guard and protect my time very carefully. Which means what I say yes to and what I say no to. And that goes back to those rules. Knowing what's important is what's most important.”

“Show me your calendar. I'll show you your priorities. When it's there and it's measurable and it's quantifiable, what does that leave over?”

“So my perspective on time is to focus on things that fill your tank, that don't drain them, to protect and defend your time and to not feel guilty about that. To learn how to say no politely because it's the one resource again that you can't make more of. “

As I watched the hourglass empty to the bottom half, my time was up.  My original eagerness to leave the sauna had faded; I felt like I wanted to stay in a little longer instead of being ready to bolt.  What do I do with this?  My first priority was to write about it back at the hotel. Now, immediately.  The work emails can wait.

Second, I’m going to talk with my daughter tonight about the value of time.  I don’t expect it to be a revelation but it’s just one little nugget in a lifetime of advice and guidance that I hope will have an impact on her. Now in her college days and for years to come.

I will say yes to more of things that matter to me, and no to the ones that steal my time. I will be intentional with my family, my friendships, my faith, and I how I invest in others.

We each have an hourglass with only so much sand in it…what will you do with yours?