How to Create All the Time You Want
One of the most frequent complaints I hear (and I’ve said myself) is about the lack of time to get everything done. That sense of time pressure seems to have greatly increased for many of us over the past several years. So, why is it we feel a sense of diminishing time to get things accomplished?
Have you ever noticed when you’re doing something you LOVE to do, time just flies by? And when you’re doing something you detest, time drags on? This simple truth will provide you with all the information you need to create all the time you want!
Gay Hendricks writes in The Big Leap that time needs to be reframed as under our control rather than us being under its control. So how do we control time, you ask? The answer is much simpler than you may think. By bringing our attention to the moment at hand, that moment expands. In that expanded moment we find we have all the time we need. That’s the secret of what happens when we’re engrossed in an activity and we experience time as suspended.
After reading a particular chapter in Hendricks’ book, I decided to play around with that concept and see what would happen. I made it a practice, when I was fretting about time or being late for something, to pull my attention back to the present moment. I would focus on my senses and what each was registering in that moment. What I discovered was, not only did I end up with enough time to accomplish the task at hand, but my experience of that time was much more pleasant.
For example, driving across town for an appointment, I was stressing about being late due to having left later than I intended and traffic being heavy. So I decided to consciously focus on my experience in the moment using each sense. I noticed the sun shining through the trees, felt its warmth on my face as I drove, saw a flock of birds fly over that I would typically not have noticed…and…arrived at my destination with 3 minutes to spare!
Take a few opportunities in the upcoming days to practice this technique and pay attention to what you have for outcomes, both in terms of getting things accomplished and with regard to how enjoyable those experiences are to you. The more you practice time being at your command, the more time you will experience having to command.