Why Time Is the Most Precious Gift You Can Give - Lessons From Day 2016 of My Running Streak

Yesterday was my father's 79th birthday. And like most years, the question came up — what do you actually buy someone who has lived a full life, who has earned what he needs, and who, if he really wanted something, would have quietly gone and bought it himself?

The answer I keep coming back to is this: you cannot buy your way into someone's memory. You can only show up.

That is what Day 2016 of this running streak keeps reminding me, in a roundabout way. Every single morning I lace up my Vibram FiveFingers and head out the door, regardless of what is happening in life, I am choosing to show up. Not because every run is meaningful in isolation. But because the accumulation of showing up, day after day, is what creates something worth remembering. Something real.

For my father's birthday this year, I arranged a cod fishing trip. Last year it was sea bass. The year before that, something else entirely. But the thread running through all of it is the same — I give him my time. We go somewhere together, we do something he loves, and we come back with a shared experience that neither of us could have manufactured separately.

I remember as a child going on a similar trip with him. The sea was rough. I was horribly seasick. But I distinctly remember hauling in what felt like endless cod, bringing home a black bin liner full of fish, and my father's face as we ate that catch for months afterwards. That memory has not faded. It could not be purchased. It was built from time spent together, from presence, from choosing him over everything else that day demanded.

That is what I mean when I say time is the most precious gift you can give.

When someone is financially stable — when they have built a life where the practical things are covered — what they cannot buy is your attention. They cannot buy a shared afternoon, a boat trip, a long drive with no particular destination. They cannot buy you sitting next to them doing something they love. That is yours to give, and it costs you something real. It costs you time.

I think about this in the context of family travel as well. One of my non-negotiable values is travelling with my family. Not because the destinations are exotic or the itineraries are packed, but because when you step outside the ordinary routine of home life — the entrepreneurship, the properties, the calls, the commitments — something shifts. You are suddenly just present. You are outside the noise. And in that space, you actually connect with the people who matter most to you. The memories you build in those moments are the ones that stay.

It is easy, when you are building something, to tell yourself that the busyness is temporary. That you will carve out more time when the next project settles, when the numbers stack up, when the calendar clears. But the calendar never fully clears. That is just the nature of a life spent building things. And so the discipline has to be deliberate. You have to choose the fishing trip. You have to book the holiday. You have to put the experience on the calendar before everything else fills the space.

I have been running every single day for 2016 consecutive days now. I have covered 20,160 kilometres in that time, barefoot style, as part of a mission to run the equivalent of a full lap of the earth — 40,075 kilometres in total. I still have 19,915 kilometres to go. Every one of those kilometres exists to raise awareness and funds for children's causes, including Great Ormond Street Hospital and BBC Children in Need, as part of a £1 million fundraising goal.

What keeps me going — honestly, what gets me out of the door on the hard days — is not motivation. It is not some internal pep talk. It is consistency. It is having decided, long before the alarm went off, that I would do this today. That decision was made years ago, and I just honour it each morning. That discipline, that daily choice to show up, is the same discipline I try to apply to the people in my life. To my father. To my family. To the moments that matter.

Because here is what I know from five and a half years of daily running: the days that feel unremarkable are the ones that actually build the foundation. The run that felt ordinary on Day 347 or Day 891 or Day 1,654 was still a brick in something much larger. And the Tuesday afternoon fishing trip that does not have a big occasion attached to it is still a brick in the relationship. It still matters. The ordinary moments, done consistently, are what create an extraordinary life.

So if you are reading this and you are trying to work out what to get someone for their birthday or Christmas, especially someone who has reached a point in life where they have what they need, consider this. What experience can you share with them? What would they love to do that they would never arrange for themselves? What memory could you create together that neither of you would trade for anything you could wrap in paper?

The gift is not the fishing trip. The gift is the day. The conversation on the boat. The cup of tea in the cold morning air before you set off. The drive home with the catch in the boot. Those are the things that will be remembered.

I am 2016 days into a streak. 20,160 kilometres down. Nearly 20,000 still to run. And every step of it is about something bigger than running. It is about showing up. For children who need support. For the mission. And for the people who matter.

Show up for yours.