In One Word: TIME

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By Michael Partnow

Tick, tick, tick …

The ‘ticks’ seem to be accelerating, and now I am hearing gong, gong, gong…

No, this article is not about my fondness for beautifully detailed grandfather clocks. It’s about TIME.

How do you spend your time? How have you spent your time? How will you spend your time?  I spend a great deal of time these days thinking about this. While I am incredibly proud of the time I have spent thus far in life and remain excited about the future, I do have those moments. Wherein I ask myself, “Could I have done better? Did I do enough? Did I do too much? What type of future will I have?” 

Then my smile dissipates, and turns into a bit of worry, a bit of concern. I think much of it is because many of us do not have a clear definition of what success looks like in our lives. Isn’t that ironic? We spend so much of our time trying to understand what success looks like, but when it comes to measuring the worth of our own lives, we do not seem to have enough clarity. 

As I type this in, I am looking around my home at all the pictures on the walls and remembering the happy times we have had as a family. My entire dining room is a beautiful collection of these memories, and I keep reminding myself that the best is yet to come!

Don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly happy and grateful for my amazing life.  But it’s scary. The unknown, that is. You just never know what life will throw at you —tragedy, accidents, health related issues, financial challenges — but I choose not to live in fear. Rather, I live for the moment as opposed to in the past, or the uncertainty of what the future might bring.

So, what could be my sage advice here? Take the TIME to enjoy! Savor the moments as they quickly will continue to  pass by. The moments to come, while not with certainty, will be good ones. I know it! 

When my high school sweetheart, MaryAnn — now my amazing wife of 27 years — and I moved into our home, we purchased a grandfather clock. (I guess we have come a complete circle!) At the shop, the salesperson asked what we wanted to inscribe on it. We were not even aware that we could have an inscription on the clock, so we said we would get back to her the next day. We went home and thought about it. 

As I end this article, I leave you with that beautiful inscription on our grandfather clock , as I guess it has helped me figure that I do in fact have a definition of a successful life:

 Togetherness, It Means Everything (T.I.M.E.)!


Michael S. Partnow is the Head of Wealth Management at JIFFY.ai.  JIFFY.ai’s intelligent automation platform enables enterprises to build business applications that run their processes end to end.  Using cognitive capabilities such as intelligent document processing, AI, RPA, ML and advanced analytics, these apps learn and adapt to changing situations impacting the business landscape, and even mimic human thinking and actions intelligently.

Contact Michael at [email protected]