Do you always have the feeling that you are out of time?

Always running to the next thing? Getting to the end of the day and feeling like the day just slipped away and you don’t even know how?

You are not alone…

We all have struggles with this issue, we buy planners, schedulers, time management tools, we try them for a while to see if they help us with our lack of time and sadly, most of the time, they don’t. We stick to the schedule for a while, we keep the tasks on time for a few days, but we still have the feeling that time is slipping away, and we still feel like we are always in a hurry trying to get to the next thing in our calendar…

Have you experienced the opposite though? 

Those times where time seems to expand, where you feel like you are totally in the moment, where you managed to do all that you wanted to do and feel like your day was so productive?

What is it that makes this so? 

Time is time, one minute is always 60 seconds, one hour is always 60 minutes, one day is always 24 hours… and yet, sometimes, one minute seems to last forever while others seems to disappear in a few seconds…

The difference between these two different perceptions comes from the way you relate with time. 

You are normally used to understand time in ABSOLUTE terms, following the Newtonian model. With this model, time is fix, there is a finite amount of it and you need to split it carefully if you want to have enough time to do all the things you want to do. The main assumption here is that time is scarce, so it makes you feel like there is not enough hours in the day.

The other way of understanding time is to see it as RELATIVE, using Einstein’s model. According to this model, time is relative to the observer. 

This relativity is what happens when sometimes you feel like one hour with your friends flies away, while suffering one minute in pain seems to last forever. 

The explanation I read from Gay Hendricks in his book The big leap, helped me understanding why it feels this way. He explains that the feeling of time expanding and contracting comes from our relationship with space and how we can learn to occupy it in a new way.

Using the example above, when you are suffering in pain, you tend to CONTRACT and try to get AWAY from the pain; you are consciously trying not to be where you are in order to avoid the pain sensation. And the more you get your awareness away from your space, time seems to SLOW down. 

On the other hand, when you are having a great time with your friends, you want to be PRESENT, you are fully AWARE and in the moment, and time seems to DISAPPEAR quickly. You want to be fully with your friends and you forget about time.

So, how can you change your relationship with time, so you can use it to your advantage? 

You have to realize that you are the SOURCE of time.  

You don't have time, you MAKE TIME.

Just think about it, imagine that you are at your office really busy working and someone interrupts you knocking at your door. They ask you if you can do something for them and you reply “I don't have time right now”. But, now imagine the same scenario where you receive a call from your loved one saying that they are in trouble and need your help immediately. Would you tell them “I don't have time right now?” I am guessing you wouldn’t and you’d get out of the office as soon as possible to go and help them out. 

So, the truth is, you had the same time in both examples, in one you chose to give an excuse not to do something you didn't want to do, on the other, you chose to help your loved one. 

Same time, just a different way of handling it.

Now, what can you do to stop using time as an excuse?

Start by being aware.

Notice all the times you or someone around you say that they don't have time, or they are in a hurry, or they are running late… 

Start there and you’ll start noticing whenever you use time as your own excuse, then you can switch your responses from being the victim of time, to being in control of time.

From “I don't have time” to “I choose not to do that right now”. 

But, if this idea of making your own time doesn't work for you just yet, maybe you prefer to use this other idea from Laura Vanderkam. 

In her book, 168 hours: You have more time than you think, she uses a concept that, for me, personally helped me shape my weeks differently. 

As she explains, we all have the same amount of time, 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week. The main thing is to stop trying to manage time on a daily basis and use the WEEK as our baseline instead. 

What made a difference for me personally was the way she explained how to use our weeks. 

Imagine that you wake up on Mondays at 6 am and you count your week from Monday 6 am to Monday 6am. When you start counting 168 hours from that start time, when do you think is your mid-week? 

On Thursday, at 6 pm, is when you reach mid-week. That means you still have ahead of you the other half of the week to accomplish whatever weekly goals you’ve set for yourself. 

It might seem so simple, but before that, I used to think that by Thursday evening the week was almost gone, after all, Friday is coming and isn’t that the end of the week?

When I heard the way she explained this weekly concept, I had my AHA moment…

I realized that I just gained a bunch of time, because I now see my goals and actions spread out during the whole week, and I don't feel like I’m out of time by Thursday, because I just reached mid-week!

It’s made a difference for me when I realized that even if I don't get to work on some of my goals on Monday, I’m still able to make it up and get to them so I can accomplish them within the week. It’s shifted my time perception and has taken away the feeling of being behind.

And I hope this helps you as it has helped me…

Now, tell me below, have you ever felt time relativity? Have you felt like time flies when you are having fun and slows down when you are bored? 

Will you try and stop using time as an excuse? Or will you try and manage your time on a weekly basis?

How do you prefer to manage your time, daily, weekly? Have you found any good planner out there that you would recommend? Please share it below!!!

xoxo, 

Sofia