It's About Time
Believing you can manage time is like believing you can teach a cat to cook. It doesn’t matter how hard you try or how diligent you are, in the end, the cat will stare at you like you’ve lost your mind and time will march on unmanaged.
Sure, you can organize your day or your week. And you can fill up your Day Timer or your PDA with meetings, appointments and events you’ve planned. But, as the old saying goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
As a society, we are preoccupied with time. Everyone, including elementary school kids, wears a watch. Our computers tell us what time it is, as do our cell phones, our faxes, our microwaves, and our VCRS (assuming you’ve figured out how to get yours to stop flashing 12:00.) We watch the clock and mark the days off the calendar. We “make time” (what ARE the ingredients in that recipe?), we “kill time”, and we worry that we’re “wasting” time. Some of us try to “save” time by driving like Jeff Gordon every time we get on the road. We believe that “time is money,” even though when we offer to give the cashier at the grocery store six minutes instead of our debit card, she just ignores us.
Instead of spending so much of your life trying to manage something you can’t, why not try instead to get a new perspective on time. Here are some quick tips for changing the way you think about the days, hours, and minutes of your life:
Stop racing against time. Are you always in a rush? Do you, for example, eat so fast you have to keep a Heimlich Maneuver chart nearby in case you choke? Many of us are always in hurry, but if we stopped to ask ourselves why, we’d have no idea. Even when we don’t have to be somewhere or have a deadline to meet, we move at supersonic speed, as if we’re the Roadrunner and we’re trapped in a cartoon life we can’t escape.
The next time you catch yourself driving over the speed limit or practically walking over people at work or the mall, stop and ask why you’re moving so fast. Simply taking a second to become more self-aware may help you put an end to unnecessary rushing. Keep in mind the words of Simon & Garfunkel: “Slow down, you move too fast.” Or for an even better reminder, remember what Mahatma Gandhi said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” Ironically, living life at a slower pace actually makes it seem like there’s more time, rather than less.
Do one thing at a time – Do you pride yourself on your ability to squeeze as many activities into a day or week as humanly possible? Do you point to your calendar with satisfaction, showing your co-workers or friends how every day is totally filled up with “stuff?” If you have an unscheduled block of time, rather than feeling relief, do you feel guilt or fear that you’ve forgotten something really important, like taking the dog to ballet lessons or the kids to the vet for their flea shots? Or is that vice-versa? Women are especially bad about over-scheduling. After all, we reason, what separates the women from the boys is our ability to do more than one thing at a time. Sometimes, we don’t have a choice, but even when we do, we often take on too many tasks at once. How many times have you been on the phone while answering e-mail and doing ab exercises at your desk? Too many to count, right?
To stop this bad time habit, for one week spend an hour a day doing only one thing. It can be starting that novel you keep meaning to write, baking cookies, helping the kids with homework, brushing the cat’s teeth, or negotiating world peace – anything you feel you’ve recently neglected. By practicing this new behavior for a week, you’ll not only find it easier to focus on one thing at a time in the future, you’ll also notice that you still get everything done AND you get more things done right because you’ve been able to give your time and energy to them. No to mention how much more enjoyable life will be – imagine, for example, not feeling compelled to add things to the grocery list while making love to your husband!
Save some time – How many gadgets and devices have you purchased in your life because you thought they’d save you time? That Blackberry in your purse was supposed to help you save time by making you more organized. The more powerful vacuum was supposed to save you time cleaning the carpet. The combination phone/answering machine/fax/printer/scanner/coffee maker/inner thigh exerciser should have saved a lot of time, but you spend all of it and more on the phone with customer service trying to find out why it doesn’t work.
If everything saves so much time, why do we always feel like we don’t have any left? And if anyone has saved any time, where is it and can I borrow a few thousand hours without interest?
The real way to save time is not to get sucked into the idea that new technology will give you more of it. Fill in the following equation before you buy something you probably don’t really need:
Actual time saved = Possible time saved MINUS time spent researching your options MINUS time spent going from store to store or from website to website checking who has the best price MINUS time spent reading the instructions MINUS time spent rereading the instructions, this time the English version MINUS time spent hooking whatever you’ve bought up to whatever it has to be hooked up to MINUS time spent going to the store for the piece that was left out of the package MINUS calling tech support and being put on hold for thirty minutes MINUS time spent taking the device back to the store or to the post office because it didn’t save time after all.
Whenever someone tries to convince you of the time-saving qualities of a new product or piece of software, ask yourself if you’re really going to be that gullible again.
Remember, there’s no time like the present – If you spend your days looking forward to the future or wishing for the old days, you just squander away the only time that really matters – today, this moment. It’s not bad to have fond memories or plans for the future, but if you’re stuck in another time zone, you’ll never fully enjoy your life.
Many women play a game I call “When I...” It goes like this “When I get the kids off to college, then I’ll go back to school/change jobs/start my home business grooming Chihuahuas. And when I get my degree/become a millionaire/get rid of the fleas, I’ll start taking time out to have some fun and maybe take a bathroom break.” Living life in the “When” means you miss all of life in the “Now.”
Here are two simple ways to help you stay in the present: (1) Type the words “Live for today” on a piece of paper and put them somewhere you’ll see them every day. (2) Get a page-a-day calendar and put it on your desk as a constant reminder of this day, the only day you can live right now. You’ll still may need your week-at-glance or monthly calendar for scheduling, but keep those hidden away in a drawer until you need them.
Get some free time – They may not give it away at the bank (which is a shame, especially if you open a “time deposit” account), but you can get some free time. It is really simple if you have the right tools. All that is required is an eraser (or a bottle of Wite Out) and a strong dose of courage. Now take the eraser (or the Wite Out) and eliminate at least one item from your To Do list or calendar every day this week. Voila, free time!
Here comes the hard part, though. The part that takes courage. Do not, I repeat, do not, schedule something else into that block of time. If you want to love your time, you will set part of your day free. Let what will happen, happen. This is a good lesson in learning that you are not in charge of managing everything in life. Some of the best things in life happen spontaneously. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you make other plans.”
Setting time free is an amazing feeling. Think back on the last time you had a meeting scheduled and it got unexpectedly cancelled. Remember the giddy joy you felt? It was almost like when you were a kid and discovered school was cancelled because of the snow!
Give your kids a time-out – You wouldn’t stand by your children’s beds with a stopwatch and measure how long it takes them to get dressed or bathed, right? And you don’t make them punch a time clock when they get home from school, do you? Yet many children feel this is what we do, always pressuring them to speed up and do more with the time they have. If your first-grader or pre-teen feels the same type of time-pressures you feel, it’s because they’ve learned to be a slave to time from you, their parent. It’s time kids got a time-out. Not the kind where they have to sit in their room and think about what they’ve done wrong, but the kind where they get a gift of unscheduled, unhurried time every day. In a perfect world, every child should have at least a few free hours a day with no homework, no extracurricular activities, no family meetings or chores. Of course in a perfect world, we’d have time for a long bubble bath too.
Do what you can to help your kids take time out for themselves in their own busy lives – encourage them not to sign up for every sport or hobby, make sure the family schedule is reasonable (broken down by day, not every fifteen minutes, for example), and set a good example by remembering to take time out for yourself as well.
Change your attitude not the clock – Have you noticed that in every family there is always someone who runs late for everything and someone else who is frantic about getting there – wherever there is – a few minutes early, just in case? The solution many of us “organized” people have for the “procrastinators” is to set the clock ahead ten to fifteen minutes to fool them into being on time. Of course, that only works a couple of times before the jig is up and we waste time defending our stand on the whole time issue.
See if you can become less time-stressed by switching roles for a week. If you’re always the early bird, be late (not, of course, if you’re due at the maternity ward. In that case, go whenever the doctor or the baby says you should). If you’re always late, on the other hand, arrive everywhere fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. This exercise will help you see that a few extra minutes ahead or behind schedule doesn’t really have that much impact on things in the long run. Certainly not enough to waste even more time arguing with the people you love.
Have the time of your life – Imagine this: instead of spending your time trying to schedule, organize, and manage your time, you invest your energy in having the best time humanly possible.You call friends up out of the blue and ask them to lunch. You pull over at a playground on the drive home and try out the new swing set. When someone asks you if you can go out to play, you say “Yes!” not “I’m too busy.” On the other hand, when someone asks you to make time for another meeting, you say “I can’t, I’m too busy having the time of my life.”
If you spend all your time doing things that bring you little or no pleasure, that’s the true definition of wasting time. Try this instead: You know that list of things you’d love to do in your life? The list of things like: Take flying lessons, run for Congress, and become a back-up dancer for Shania Twain? (Okay, maybe that’s my list). Well, this month, why not take one dream and spend at least a few hours a week pursuing it? You may not be able to buy more time, but you certainly can enjoy the time you have more fully!
Believing you can control time gives time the power to control you. Stop looking at your watch and start looking at your life instead.
Sure, you can organize your day or your week. And you can fill up your Day Timer or your PDA with meetings, appointments and events you’ve planned. But, as the old saying goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
As a society, we are preoccupied with time. Everyone, including elementary school kids, wears a watch. Our computers tell us what time it is, as do our cell phones, our faxes, our microwaves, and our VCRS (assuming you’ve figured out how to get yours to stop flashing 12:00.) We watch the clock and mark the days off the calendar. We “make time” (what ARE the ingredients in that recipe?), we “kill time”, and we worry that we’re “wasting” time. Some of us try to “save” time by driving like Jeff Gordon every time we get on the road. We believe that “time is money,” even though when we offer to give the cashier at the grocery store six minutes instead of our debit card, she just ignores us.
Instead of spending so much of your life trying to manage something you can’t, why not try instead to get a new perspective on time. Here are some quick tips for changing the way you think about the days, hours, and minutes of your life:
Stop racing against time. Are you always in a rush? Do you, for example, eat so fast you have to keep a Heimlich Maneuver chart nearby in case you choke? Many of us are always in hurry, but if we stopped to ask ourselves why, we’d have no idea. Even when we don’t have to be somewhere or have a deadline to meet, we move at supersonic speed, as if we’re the Roadrunner and we’re trapped in a cartoon life we can’t escape.
The next time you catch yourself driving over the speed limit or practically walking over people at work or the mall, stop and ask why you’re moving so fast. Simply taking a second to become more self-aware may help you put an end to unnecessary rushing. Keep in mind the words of Simon & Garfunkel: “Slow down, you move too fast.” Or for an even better reminder, remember what Mahatma Gandhi said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” Ironically, living life at a slower pace actually makes it seem like there’s more time, rather than less.
Do one thing at a time – Do you pride yourself on your ability to squeeze as many activities into a day or week as humanly possible? Do you point to your calendar with satisfaction, showing your co-workers or friends how every day is totally filled up with “stuff?” If you have an unscheduled block of time, rather than feeling relief, do you feel guilt or fear that you’ve forgotten something really important, like taking the dog to ballet lessons or the kids to the vet for their flea shots? Or is that vice-versa? Women are especially bad about over-scheduling. After all, we reason, what separates the women from the boys is our ability to do more than one thing at a time. Sometimes, we don’t have a choice, but even when we do, we often take on too many tasks at once. How many times have you been on the phone while answering e-mail and doing ab exercises at your desk? Too many to count, right?
To stop this bad time habit, for one week spend an hour a day doing only one thing. It can be starting that novel you keep meaning to write, baking cookies, helping the kids with homework, brushing the cat’s teeth, or negotiating world peace – anything you feel you’ve recently neglected. By practicing this new behavior for a week, you’ll not only find it easier to focus on one thing at a time in the future, you’ll also notice that you still get everything done AND you get more things done right because you’ve been able to give your time and energy to them. No to mention how much more enjoyable life will be – imagine, for example, not feeling compelled to add things to the grocery list while making love to your husband!
Save some time – How many gadgets and devices have you purchased in your life because you thought they’d save you time? That Blackberry in your purse was supposed to help you save time by making you more organized. The more powerful vacuum was supposed to save you time cleaning the carpet. The combination phone/answering machine/fax/printer/scanner/coffee maker/inner thigh exerciser should have saved a lot of time, but you spend all of it and more on the phone with customer service trying to find out why it doesn’t work.
If everything saves so much time, why do we always feel like we don’t have any left? And if anyone has saved any time, where is it and can I borrow a few thousand hours without interest?
The real way to save time is not to get sucked into the idea that new technology will give you more of it. Fill in the following equation before you buy something you probably don’t really need:
Actual time saved = Possible time saved MINUS time spent researching your options MINUS time spent going from store to store or from website to website checking who has the best price MINUS time spent reading the instructions MINUS time spent rereading the instructions, this time the English version MINUS time spent hooking whatever you’ve bought up to whatever it has to be hooked up to MINUS time spent going to the store for the piece that was left out of the package MINUS calling tech support and being put on hold for thirty minutes MINUS time spent taking the device back to the store or to the post office because it didn’t save time after all.
Whenever someone tries to convince you of the time-saving qualities of a new product or piece of software, ask yourself if you’re really going to be that gullible again.
Remember, there’s no time like the present – If you spend your days looking forward to the future or wishing for the old days, you just squander away the only time that really matters – today, this moment. It’s not bad to have fond memories or plans for the future, but if you’re stuck in another time zone, you’ll never fully enjoy your life.
Many women play a game I call “When I...” It goes like this “When I get the kids off to college, then I’ll go back to school/change jobs/start my home business grooming Chihuahuas. And when I get my degree/become a millionaire/get rid of the fleas, I’ll start taking time out to have some fun and maybe take a bathroom break.” Living life in the “When” means you miss all of life in the “Now.”
Here are two simple ways to help you stay in the present: (1) Type the words “Live for today” on a piece of paper and put them somewhere you’ll see them every day. (2) Get a page-a-day calendar and put it on your desk as a constant reminder of this day, the only day you can live right now. You’ll still may need your week-at-glance or monthly calendar for scheduling, but keep those hidden away in a drawer until you need them.
Get some free time – They may not give it away at the bank (which is a shame, especially if you open a “time deposit” account), but you can get some free time. It is really simple if you have the right tools. All that is required is an eraser (or a bottle of Wite Out) and a strong dose of courage. Now take the eraser (or the Wite Out) and eliminate at least one item from your To Do list or calendar every day this week. Voila, free time!
Here comes the hard part, though. The part that takes courage. Do not, I repeat, do not, schedule something else into that block of time. If you want to love your time, you will set part of your day free. Let what will happen, happen. This is a good lesson in learning that you are not in charge of managing everything in life. Some of the best things in life happen spontaneously. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you make other plans.”
Setting time free is an amazing feeling. Think back on the last time you had a meeting scheduled and it got unexpectedly cancelled. Remember the giddy joy you felt? It was almost like when you were a kid and discovered school was cancelled because of the snow!
Give your kids a time-out – You wouldn’t stand by your children’s beds with a stopwatch and measure how long it takes them to get dressed or bathed, right? And you don’t make them punch a time clock when they get home from school, do you? Yet many children feel this is what we do, always pressuring them to speed up and do more with the time they have. If your first-grader or pre-teen feels the same type of time-pressures you feel, it’s because they’ve learned to be a slave to time from you, their parent. It’s time kids got a time-out. Not the kind where they have to sit in their room and think about what they’ve done wrong, but the kind where they get a gift of unscheduled, unhurried time every day. In a perfect world, every child should have at least a few free hours a day with no homework, no extracurricular activities, no family meetings or chores. Of course in a perfect world, we’d have time for a long bubble bath too.
Do what you can to help your kids take time out for themselves in their own busy lives – encourage them not to sign up for every sport or hobby, make sure the family schedule is reasonable (broken down by day, not every fifteen minutes, for example), and set a good example by remembering to take time out for yourself as well.
Change your attitude not the clock – Have you noticed that in every family there is always someone who runs late for everything and someone else who is frantic about getting there – wherever there is – a few minutes early, just in case? The solution many of us “organized” people have for the “procrastinators” is to set the clock ahead ten to fifteen minutes to fool them into being on time. Of course, that only works a couple of times before the jig is up and we waste time defending our stand on the whole time issue.
See if you can become less time-stressed by switching roles for a week. If you’re always the early bird, be late (not, of course, if you’re due at the maternity ward. In that case, go whenever the doctor or the baby says you should). If you’re always late, on the other hand, arrive everywhere fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. This exercise will help you see that a few extra minutes ahead or behind schedule doesn’t really have that much impact on things in the long run. Certainly not enough to waste even more time arguing with the people you love.
Have the time of your life – Imagine this: instead of spending your time trying to schedule, organize, and manage your time, you invest your energy in having the best time humanly possible.You call friends up out of the blue and ask them to lunch. You pull over at a playground on the drive home and try out the new swing set. When someone asks you if you can go out to play, you say “Yes!” not “I’m too busy.” On the other hand, when someone asks you to make time for another meeting, you say “I can’t, I’m too busy having the time of my life.”
If you spend all your time doing things that bring you little or no pleasure, that’s the true definition of wasting time. Try this instead: You know that list of things you’d love to do in your life? The list of things like: Take flying lessons, run for Congress, and become a back-up dancer for Shania Twain? (Okay, maybe that’s my list). Well, this month, why not take one dream and spend at least a few hours a week pursuing it? You may not be able to buy more time, but you certainly can enjoy the time you have more fully!
Believing you can control time gives time the power to control you. Stop looking at your watch and start looking at your life instead.