Never Enough Time!

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We’re all so busy these days, there never seems to be enough time to do all the things we want to do. It doesn’t matter if you’re a teenager trying to mesh your studies with a busy social life, or a CEO with a meetings-packed schedule, or someone who works two jobs and wants to get to the gym on a regular basis … everybody seems to be short of time. Which is clearly crazy since we all have exactly the same amount of time every single day, down to the last millisecond.

I think we’re all in the same boat in this respect, I really do. I mean, let’s take you for example … I’m willing to bet you’d love to have more time for fitness training, right? As well as time for your family and friends, obviously, not to mention how much you’d like to squeeze in some study and maybe listen to some music. Oh, yeah, sorry … I meant to mention that you’d probably like to meditate more (if only there was time). And that stack of books you have that you keep meaning to read, or those magazine articles you keep mentally filing away for future reading.

But when are you ever going to fit it all in, that’s the question. It’s all getting badly out of hand. You’re not really coping too well with the situation, am I right? Sorry to be personal, but I feel I already know you pretty well.

spiral clockAnd it’s a problem that seems to affect everyone these days, and (and I’m guessing here) it’s happening so much more these days than it ever did. Or maybe that’s just my perception of it. So what’s the answer? How can we fit it all in? Where are we going to find all the time needed for everything we want to do?

Perception …

I just mentioned the word ‘perception’. I think maybe that’s at the heart of this ‘problem’, and maybe, if that’s true, it isn’t really a problem at all, merely the result of something perceived badly, or wrongly. Like I said earlier, we all have 24 hours every morning, laid out before us in glistening, unruffled perfection.

Maybe if we just realised that we’d be halfway to solving this so-called problem. If we could just realise, once and for all, the world is pretty much as it should be, and there’s time enough for everything.

I don’t have any more time than you. You don’t have any more time than the president, or the Prime Minister. Michelangelo didn’t have any more time than the man who swept his studio clean. Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t have any more time than any office worker you can think of. And yet some of these people seem to have way more time than others. They seem to get more done anyway, that’s for sure.

laughing kidAnd at certain times in your life you seemed to have had more time than you do now. Like, for example, when you were about seven years old and your days stretched out ahead of you seemingly endlessly because you were having so much fun, remember? Every moment seemed delicious and valuable.

The fun element played a big part in that, don’t you agree? And the feeling of adventure. You were always feeling like you were discovering something incredible as a child, and that seemed to stretch time to an amazing extent.

So much of our perception of time is influenced by our experiences. As Einstein pointed out, an hour in the right company can seem like no more than a few seconds, but a few seconds can seem like forever, if they’re filled with pain.

We could just settle for doing less stuff, I suppose. Cut down on your expectations and just hope to manage to get a few things done each day. It’s not a very elegant solution, but it might work. If we could afford it, we could get someone else to do some of the stuff we can’t manage. Not sure that’s much of a solution really though, because most of the stuff we want to do, we actually want to do … if you understand what I mean.

A change of perception

your perceptionWe could change our perception. That could work. We can’t suddenly and magically regain the minds of seven-year-olds, but we can adopt some of their attitudes. What’s stopping us seeing the world through a child’s eyes?

Each and every thing can become something gleaming and flecked with wonder. We can once again start to see the morning as an eternally welcoming new beginning filled with the promise of something amazing. Yes, we could start to see every morning like that. If we chose to. And every day.