Last Updated on September 6, 2024
We’re all given 24 hours in a day. However, what we do with it varies from one person to another. Some may choose to spend a huge chunk of those hours working. While a good number of folks prefer to spend it hanging out with friends and family. Then there are people who can’t seem to fit all their tasks in a day.
But what is time exactly, and why are there individuals who seem pretty good at managing theirs?
The Time Management Paradox
Believe it or not, you’ve felt this way too, at some point: you finally have all the time in the world, but then the harder it is to actually manage it.
A good example would be college life. For students at university for instance, they’re happy to find that they can now fully control where their hours go to. They can choose which classes to take, if they want to join clubs, whether or not they will party for the night, or if they want to take on a part-time job. However, the more freedom they have, the more difficult it is to manage time in general.
That’s because when faced with the options to study, attend parties, finish group projects, or catch up on some reading, it’s simpler to just get a good night’s sleep or watch videos on YouTube. It’s true when they said that with ‘more freedom means more responsibility’. If no one is pushing or mandating what you do with your day, it can be challenging to complete important tasks.
Urgent vs. Important
Time management is attainable. But it can be cumbersome to find the right system that suits you. There are all kinds of methods for helping folks deal with a loaded schedule. There are apps, virtual assistants, and planners to name a few. But even with these devices, one can still procrastinate or put off something essential.
Time is what we make of it. And it is up to us to decide whether a task is important and not urgent, or urgent but not important. Understanding the difference between these two is crucial to getting the most important stuff out of the way before the day is done.
You’re not alone in feeling there aren’t enough hours in a day. So for those days when you need the extra push, here are some wise time quotes and sayings:
Time Quotes and Sayings
“An inch of time is an inch of gold but you can’t buy that inch of time with an inch of gold.” – Chinese Proverb
“Time is a gift that most of us take for granted. We get so caught up in the busyness of our daily lives that we rarely stop and take a serious look at how we’re spending this gift.” – Cheryl Richardson, Life Makeovers
“The key to you being able to recover from depression is to set yourself a few simple goals that you can slowly build upon. Also it is important that you take things one day at a time and whenever you achieve a particular goal you have set yourself then reward yourself for doing so.” – Heather Rose, Depression Self Help
“No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters” – George Eliot
“The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.” – Kahlil Gibran
“Prioritizing is an important aspect of productivity. Listed tasks should be things that matter: things that are in alignment with your objectives and do not distract you from what you really should be doing.” – Romuald Andrade, Procrastination
“Remember, as Martin Luther King Jr. put it best, ‘The time is always right to do the right thing.’” – JuJu Sabra
“Everyone has the gift of time, but few utilize.” – M.K. Soni
“How can we resent the life we’ve created for ourselves? Who’s to blame, who’s to credit, but us? Who can change it, any time we wish, but us?” – Richard Bach
“A birthday wish for you to enjoy the time you’ve been given. Cherish every year that comes your way.” – Danielle Duckery, Happy Birthday Greetings for Card Making
“It can be tough even finding the time to tackle a new venture, let alone the energy that you need to make it happen. But you have more time and energy than you think you have.” – Matthew Oleniuk, Quit Your Job!
“Time and words can’t be recalled, even if it was only yesterday.” – Yiddish Proverb
“Everything that you want to be good at requires time, patience, and lots of repetition and practice.” – Rohen Phoenix, How to Build Self-Esteem and Crush Anxiety
“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” – Marthe Troly-Curtin
“Don’t waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy.” – Roy T. Bennett
“Time goes on. So whatever you’re going to do, do it. Do it now. Don’t wait.” – Robert De Niro
“All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that.” – Baltasar Gracian
“The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.” – Stephen R. Covey
“Time is more value than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” – Jim Rohn
“Forever is composed of nows.” – Emily Dickinson
“No use thinking of the past for its gone, don’t think of the future because it has to come, think of the present because thats where you are.” – Kazi Shams
“Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.” – Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
“Time brings all things to pass.” – Aeschylus
“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new… but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its design?” – Paracelsus
“Time is the most valuable thing that a man can spend.” – Diogenes Laërtius
“Waste your money and you’re only out of money, but waste your time and you’ve lost a part of your life.” – Michael LeBoeuf
“If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves.” – Maria Edgeworth
“Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.” – Mason Cooley
“We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.” – John F. Kennedy
“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” – C.S. Lewis
“Time is the longest distance between two places.” – Tennessee Williams
“There’s time enough, but none to spare.” – Charles W. Chesnutt
“Know how to live the time that is given you.” – Dario Fo
“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.” – Theophrastus
“Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn.” – Delmore Schwartz
“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.” – Anthony G. Oettinger
“All great achievements require time.” – Maya Angelou
“Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.” – John Archibald Wheeler
“Lost time is never found again.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” – Mother Teresa
“Time and tide wait for no man.” – Geoffrey Chaucer
“All our sweetest hours fly fastest.” – Virgil
“Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.” – Daniel J. Boorstin
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” – Albert Einstein
“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” – William Penn
“Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart’s desire.” – John Dewey
“Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.” – Adam Hochschild
“Time = Life, Therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.” – Alan Lakein
“Time will pass and seasons will come and go.” – Roy Bean
“The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.” – Henry James
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” – William Shakespeare
“Time makes more converts than reason.” – Thomas Paine
“As time goes by, you seem to weed out the things that were making your life hard.” – Tom Petty
“Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.” – Faith Baldwin
“Time is like the wind, it lifts the light and leaves the heavy.” – Dominico Cieri Estrada
“The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“I don’t care how busy I am – I will always make time for what’s most important to me.” – Kevin Hart
“Time is the wisest counselor of all.” – Pericles
“Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.” – Marcel Proust
“Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.” – Dion Boucicault
“Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.” – Leonardo da Vinci
“We must use time creatively.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
“You may delay, but time will not.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.” – Henry Van Dyke
“Time is generally the best doctor.” – Ovid
“Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.” – Warren Buffett
“Procrastination is the thief of time.” – Edward Young
“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” – Carl Sandburg
“The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.” – William Butler Yeats
“Patience and time do more than strength or passion.” – Jean de La Fontaine
“Time flies. It’s up to you to be the navigator.” – Robert Orben
“Time is the least thing we have of.” – Ernest Hemingway
“Time moves in one direction, memory in another.” – William Gibson
“Time and health are two precious assets that we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.” – Denis Waitley
“Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.” – Anthony Doerr
“Time is long but life is short.” – Stevie Wonder
“Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.” – Marcel Proust
“Time itself comes in drops.” – William James
“The big picture doesn’t just come from distance; it also comes from time.” – Simon Sinek
“There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.” – Michelangelo
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
“Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life.” – Norton Juster
“It’s crazy how fast time flies and how things progress.” – Nathan Chen
“Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.” – Thomas Hardy
“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” – Napoleon Hill
“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” – Bertrand Russell
“Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.” – Denis Waitley
“Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.” – Steven Wright
“Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.” – Charles Buxton
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” – Charles Darwin
“There are no secrets that time does not reveal.” – Jean Racine
“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Do not wait: the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.” – Napoleon Hill
“It’s such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.” – Mitch Albom
“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Five minutes are enough to dream a whole life, that is how relative time is.” – Mario Benedetti
“Life is a funny thing. We only get so many years to live it, so we have to do everything we can to make sure those years are as full as they can be. We shouldn’t waste time on things that might happen someday, or maybe even never.” – Colleen Hoover
“Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.” – David Foster Wallace
“Time is not the great teacher. Experience is. A man may live a whole life, but if he never leaves his home to experience that life, he dies knowing nothing. A mere child who has suffered and lived can be the wiser of the two.” – Lynsay Sands
“The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.” – Kahlil Gibran
“Don’t waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.” – Paulo Coelho
“Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.” – Stephen King
“Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.” – Eckhart Tolle
“The past is a ghost, the future a dream and all we ever have is now.” – Bill Cosby
“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.” – Coco Chanel
“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” – Andy Warhol
“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.” – Haruki Murakami
“Time is an illusion.” – Albert Einstein
“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time,’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.” – Lao Tzu
“Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.” – Jean de La Bruyère
“Time doesn’t heal emotional pain, you need to learn how to let go.” – Roy T. Bennett
“It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.” – Audrey Niffenegger
“There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.” – Bill Watterson
“Time is a game played beautifully by children.” – Heraclitus
“We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.” – William Shakespeare
“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” – William Penn
“Time doesn’t take away from friendship, nor does separation.” – Tennessee Williams
“Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.” – Khaled Hosseini
