Do you still remember what were you thinking when you were a 12-year-old? Maybe you were thinking what would it be like, when you grew up to be an adult one day? With all the freedom that you would have, you would think that sky would be your limit. And each passing day, you would pray that, the day would come for you to become an adult and take on the world.

Well, you are most probably an adult now (don’t think my blog is suitable for kids). So what’s next? Is being an adult really that fun? Are you being troubled by all the work stress, politics, family issues and most importantly money problem? Do you have the feeling that….how nice…if you can reverse the time and be a kid again? Trouble free life ~

The thing is, nobody can turn back time. Not until someone comes out with a time machine that works….but even then, it might not be a good thing. So what you can do now, is to live in the moment. Do what you have to do NOW. You can no longer be the 12-year-old you. Yeap, no point complaining how nice it would be if you can live as carefree as the 12-year-old you.

Also…bear in mind that….when you were 12-year-old….you wanted to be an adult….and when you are an adult…you look back and think of all the nice time you had back then. Now my question to you is….20 years down the road, when you are 40, 50 or 60….do you think you will look back at the you NOW and think “how nice if I can reverse back the time…and be the me back then…and work hard enough to pursue my dreams….and treat everyone around me kindly” ?

Think about it.

Seth Godin said it in his blog post that we should learn how to rock for five minutes a day – You rock.

But rather than focusing on such a big scale, I would say start small. Start by thinking how you can make the people around you feel better with just 5 minutes. Observe and notice the people around you who are in need of your help. Then think of what you can help them with. You can use that 5 minutes to be a good listener, a good companion, to cheer someone up, to help get something done, or to just talk to a lonely friend. Use that 5 minutes to make a difference in someone’s life.

It might not seem to be a lot with just 5 minutes but sometimes, one does not need to go to a great extent just to make a difference. Something simple and nice would do the trick. And most often than not, 5 minutes are all you need to make that happen. Big difference, and minimal impact on your time. Ideal, isn’t it?

Of course, if you have sufficient time, you can always extend it to 10 or 20 minutes. But bear in mind that, even with 5 minutes, you are already doing much better than a lot of people in this world who care less for the depressed souls around them. Remember that the key thing here is to show that you do care.

Time is one of the few limited assets that each of us has considering the fact that we only have that much time in our lifetime. Once spent, we can never bring it back. Nobody can turn back time…well, not yet anyway. That is why I personally feel that time is the world’s most valuable resource for any single person. But funnily, whenever you ask someone what kind of gift does he/she want to get from another person? It’ll surely be a luxury item, gadget or money because to them, these are the best gifts one could ever get from another person.

Unfortunately, they’re wrong. The biggest gift someone can give you is not money, gadgets or any luxury items. It is their time. Yes, that limited asset that everyone has in their lifetime – the asset called TIME. For example, when someone invites you over for a lunch, it means he is pushing away other more important things to spend the time with you. When a company calls you up for a job interview, it means the hiring manager is giving you his precious time out of his busy schedule, just to see if you are suitable for them. When someone answers your phone call, they are giving you their time to hear you out. And when a customer comes to your store to ask some questions, he is giving you his time and the opportunity for you to help him out.

In fact, I consider time to be equivalent to life itself. If you are wasting someone’s time, you are wasting someone’s life in this world. Similarly, if someone chooses to give you time (by interviewing you or meeting you), that person is giving you a small part of his life in this world. Now that I put it this way, time does sound like a very important gift, no?

If that doesn’t convince you still, let me tell you a story which I’ve read somewhere.

John lives in a small house together with his lovely wife Joanne and his 5-year-old son Michael. Every morning, John would give his son some coins, in order to encourage his son to save money. And then he’s off to work and would only be back late at night. Oh, and he has to work on weekends too. It was a pretty tiring life for John but he has to do this in order to let his family leads a comfortable life in the city. Then one day, when he came back home from work, his son approached him and asked if he could give more coins. John was furious but kept his calm. He asked his son how much did he want. Upon hearing the question, his son took out a piece of paper and a pencil and started to scribble some numbers. His son then asked him “how much do you earn in a day?” And John got even angrier and started to scold his son. Then Michael started to cry and said “I just want you to be at home with me and mum for 1 day”.

Okay, maybe I didn’t write the story properly since I couldn’t remember the full version. Hahha. Sorry for that but well, you get the meaning.

So the next time you want to give a gift to someone, always remember that the biggest gift you can ever give is your time. Spend your precious time with the person and invest part of your life in them. I’m sure most of them will appreciate it.

But of course, if you can give them some bonuses like handbags, gadgets, etc… that will be even better.

Just the other day, a friend of mine said to me “Alvin, you don’t sound curious enough for a technical guy”. That made wonder, maybe what he said is right…partially right. I am not curious enough for everything. I don’t like details on some stuff that I have no interest on, or to put it bluntly, stuff which I have no use of.

There are times when I feel that we tend to focus (or want to focus) on the details of all the things in the world. It’s not bad, but it’s not too good either especially if you are someone who cannot concentrate on something 100% for a longer period of time. Remember focusing on detail A for few hours, before turning to detail B. That can be pretty unhealthy since you might end up getting nothing done. Furthermore, by focusing on so much details, it might actually take your time and attention away from the details which really matter.

My advice is, leave the details to the experts – the reviewers, writers, mechanics, electricians, etc. You don’t have to focus on everything – we’re in the Information age, remember? Focus on the details which you are interested in – the details which seem interesting and MEANINGFUL to you. Improve your expertise on it and find out whatever information you can lay your hands on. And cut down on the time spent on things which don’t really matter to you (it’s good to know how to fix the pipe, but do you it’s necessary to drill down to the materials used, or how the pipe works, etc?).

Remember, it’s not wrong to know everything but due to the fact that each of us only have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year (let me know if you have more than that), there is only so much details that we can focus on. You can always go back to those not-so-meaningful details once you have plenty of free time to spare.

p/s…. businesses are doing the same too. That’s why we have all types of business outsourcing models nowadays – finance, human resource, cleaning, etc. People prefer to focus on the details of the things which matter to them because it’s just too expensive to focus on every single detail.

Most people nowadays are so occupied with their 9-5 job that they’ve basically run through their life. But the thing is that time never stops for anyone…and the people around us do get older with time.

In fact, the more attention we give to our work, the less attention we give to the people around us. And the less attention we give to the people around us, the sooner they will leave us or walk out from our life.

So if you are the type who are so engrossed in your work that you’ve never visited your relatives or family members for many months, maybe it’s time to take a few days off to visit them. And pay attention to how much they’ve changed while you are busy with your work.

And most importantly, stop running everyday. Working all day long will just burn your life away and it will make you miss a lot of nice things in life….and neglect a lot of people you care and love. Start walking through your life and appreciate everything. Visit your family, relatives, friends. Go out and have dinner with them. Talk to them. Care for them.

Because if you don’t stop running, you might find that one day…you’ve missed out far too much on the things that you care and love. Remember that most of these things only happen once in life. You won’t get a second chance if you’ve missed them.

p/s…. i recently returned to my hometown of Batu Pahat, Johor, to visit my grandmother. She’s quite old now..around 80+ and she could not walk the other day. So I forced myself to go back (with my parents) even though I wasn’t feeling well. It’s only a month since my last visit, and I noticed that a lot of my relatives have aged significantly. And that’s the reason I’m writing this post because I do know people who are so engrossed in their work and their own life that they don’t visit their relatives, family, parents or grandparents.