I was haunted for months after seeing 2011 dystopian science fiction action thriller, In Time, about a society in 2169 where people stop ageing at 25 and each has a digital clock on their arm that counts down how long they have to live. When the clock reaches zero, that person “times out” and dies. Time is the universal currency which can be transferred between people or ‘time capsules”.

The film features two very contrasting scenarios. The first is a harsh urban ghetto based around manufacturing areas where people generally have 24 hours or less on their clock at any given time and live from moment to moment, tyrannised by time poverty. The other is an upmarket ‘gated community’ where the pampered rich have enough time on their clocks to live for centuries. It’s an edgy movie where the former make gifts of time to each other to survive and where loved ones simply run out of time in front of your eyes. In our own world, where the rich get richer by the nano-second, the poor poorer and no-one has enough time, it’s not hard to imagine time becoming one of the key future differentiators between the haves and the have nots.

As I’ve got older, I’ve started work progressively earlier. Likely something to do with the fact that the number of times I go out partying during a whole year can now be counted on one finger rather than many fingers required for the weekly tally in my glory days. Don’t imagine this is an unusual evolution.

Now that I get up when I used to go to sleep, I find that I actually love the early mornings. I get a real buzz from the somewhat smug satisfaction that comes from being an early bird. From having been at my desk for an hour or so before most others.  From getting a jump on the day … and checking out the latest sensational Trump story in the New York Times (yes, I am helpless in the face of this addiction). Even better, at weekends, maybe ‘sleeping in’ till an indulgent 7am instead of the usual 5.50am.

In the madness of our always on society, where we’re mobilised to the max and socially networked up the wazoo, free time is one  of the genuine luxuries. How often recently have you answered “busy” rather than something more usual like”box of fluffy ducks” or even just “fine, thank you” when a colleague asks how you are? It’s become something of a professional virtue to be insanely busy — or at last give the impression of being— or you risk being seen as not very important. In some circles appearing to have time on your hands can even be career limiting.

And yet, time is so necessary to sanity.  Reflective time, time to ponder. Do nothing. Smell the roses. Guilt free time to sprawl comfortably on a sofa lost in a good book. After all, as W.H. Davis said in his classic 1911 poem, Leisure, “What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?” Making or taking time, makes us better people, personally and professionally. Time allows for balance, to  think, take stock, plan, strategise, synthesise. Taking time is taking control not just reacting to  the last txt or email. Running to the next meeting, or moving to the next item on the never ending  list of stuff to do.

Coming back to being haunted by In Time, getting up early one way of putting some more time on my meter. Consider: If you discount my indolent teens and party-centric, night-clubbing 20s … oh and the first half of my thirties that I spend recovering from the former … working on the assumption (and I am) that I will make it to at least three score years and ten, that’s two extra hours a day for some 40 years. Incredibly an massive 29.2 years that I might have slept through or squandered in some meaningless way that I have excavated slow the flow and offset the feeling of always running backwards.  AND it only gets better the longer I live!

Of course, I don’t factor in the two hours earlier I have to go to bed in order to get up at the crack of dawn. But then, it’s arguable that those two hours, when you think about what I actually did with them — out on the town, chick flic on TV, obsessively flicking through old fav music, adding to my already extensive knowledge of wine — didn’t really count. I’ll take the win.

So I raise my Americano to the other early birds everywhere. Long may you chirp away in your happy and annoying-to-everyone-else song-filled mornings … but you can keep the worms!