I was overjoyed to know that June 30 was a bit longer than usual, as I never seem to have enough time to do anything.
The astronomers, or whoever is in charge of time, decided to add one more second, a Leap Second, to Tuesday because the Earth’s rotation is slowing down due to various reasons they say, such as the gravitational pull between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun, and atmospheric changes.
The Leap Second will help time be in sync with the Earth’s rotation, they said.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) says the Earth’s rotation is slowing down also due to El Nino, thereby increasing the length of the day by as much as a thousandth of a second.
As you know, El Nino is the warming of the central to eastern tropical Pacific. The sea temperature changes and warms up by up to 3 degrees Fahrenheit and remains warm for a year or two.
I knew climate change was bad, but never realised that it was also robbing me of my precious time; you lose one second here and one second there and it all adds up, especially when you are busy procrastinating.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I said, mouthing a cliche, because even though the addition of one second may seem a tiny bit of time in your life, every little bit counts when you suddenly try to do many things all at once. Multi-tasking is the term management gurus give to the way I work.
It seems that it is not just me but everyone appears to be suffering from a shortage of time. A friend said he could not make it to dinner the other day because he has too many things to do, even though I offered to pay.
It was amazing because this has never happened to me before and I thought that nobody could refuse the offer of free food.
“Time management is essential in today’s fast-paced world,” said one expert after a seminar in Dubai, looking at his watch and then at his smartphone, just to make sure that the time on his watch was correct. He seemed a very calm and serene person. I suppose that comes from not having anything to do except tell people to get off their backsides and do some work for a change, I thought to myself, as he smiled and tried to palm off a book he had written. It had a happy title, How to Slow Down and Still Be Productive and Happy: The Beginning of a New You.
Going berserk
Over the years as I have grown wiser, I have noticed that people have various ways to deal with the lack of time. Some go berserk and try to do everything at once; which as you know is called multi-tasking
As for me, I usually panic and hyperventilate. Fortunately, I found a website as I was browsing, as time was running out on one of my projects. There was no mumbo-jumbo about time management, but it had great advice on how to take deep breaths when your work overwhelms you.
“Inhale and hold your breath,” it said. “You should breathe from your stomach, not your chest,” it said. That was easy for me as I have a slight paunch.
“Hold your breath, don’t exhale yet,” it said. As I held my breath, I started seeing bright stars floating by.
I had to let go of my breath as the phone rang. It was the account manager on the phone and she was going a bit crazy about how the “client wants to see the content now”.
Each one of us has 86,400 seconds in a day and it all depends on how wisely we use that time.
Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai.
