We are obsessed with time: ‘there are not enough hours in the day’; ‘time’s running away with me’.
How regularly do we hear ourselves and those around us say that they just don’t have time? And how often do we feel that if we could just find that extra day of the week or extra couple of hours in the day, that that could be the answer? . And yet we all have the same amount of time. Time is the one constant underlying the universality of change in our lives. We are bound by time, and we can’t escape it.Yet here’s the thing: as we’ve been thinking about this conundrum over the last few years we’ve come to realise that this limitation we have - that we are bound by time - is a good thing. Time can become a tool in our hands that can empower us to live a life doing what is important and joyful. It can free us from feeling like a hostage to time and a victim of circumstance. But how do we get it?
We have limited time and we can’t get more
How do you think about time? It is one of those fundamental aspects of being human that is universal to all of us - it’s one of the greatest levellers. We all have limited time, and we all have the same amount of time - 24 hours in a day, 7 days a week and so on. We can’t get more time, and we can’t lose time; it just is, and we’re in it. It carries on, even if we don’t, which is why it can feel so brutal when dealing with an extreme event in your life and things just seem to ‘carry on as normal’. It is a constant, irrespective of us, ticking away, whatever we do.
Our limitation in relation to time doesn’t stop there: the only time we can experience is now. We can’t experience the past, only remember it and that is not all that accurate, and we can’t experience the future, only plan for it - and we all know how that can turn out.
Our experience of the length of time is also limited, it can ‘drag’ or ‘fly’. When we’re ‘in the moment’ time goes so fast, when we’re in the midst of a monotonous task, minutes can feel like hours. There’s that saying that “For the young the days go fast and the years go slow; for the old the days go slow and the years go fast.” Yet in reality time is a constant, a second is still a second, an hour is still 60 minutes.
And yet the language we use in our everyday interactions reveals a different perspective of time.
‘I’ve run out of time’
‘I’m pushed for time’
‘I need to make more time’
‘There are not enough hours in the day’
‘I need to spend more time’
‘I need to invest more time’
"How did it get late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get late so soon?" Dr Seuss
We’ve reflected that we often think that having more time (or unlimited time) would solve a lot of the challenges we face
It can be really helpful to think of time as a resource. But not the kind of resource that our language reveals we often think it is. We generally think of time like money but, though we can invest time in something, it doesn’t create more time (unlike when you invest money and it creates more money, if you’re wise/lucky). Also unlike money, you can’t get more time and the amount of time doesn’t go up or down depending on what you do.
We tend to focus on time rather than thinking about the task or thing we want to do. We say, ‘I’ve run out of time’, rather than what has actually happened, which is that the task we wanted to do was one that needed more time than we anticipated or planned for. We shift the blame to time and away from ourselves, not wanting to take responsibility (for example, for our lack of effective planning or prioritisation). We so easily and willingly slip into a hostage mentality by saying things like, ‘I ran out of time’ or, ‘I just don’t have enough hours in the day’.
Knowing we have limited time can bring joy
Wouldn’t it be freeing not to feel like a hostage to time? To not constantly feel like we’ve run out of time and rather feel empowered to take responsibility for decisions that mean we do the important things and the things that bring us joy?
When we believe the lie that we have unlimited time we are fighting against who we are as humans. That is when we become the victims who ‘never have enough time’ and are always chasing the day, never feeling satisfied.
When we really believe the idea (ie. when knowledge that we ‘know’ becomes something that drives what we do) that we have limited time it can provide a sense of relief and freedom - but the million dollar question is how? When we embrace the idea that we have limited time we can decide what to do in that time and what not to do. We all have the same amount of it - so we can each decide what to do I want to do in that time? We can’t do everything and believe it or not that’s actually a good thing - because there are plenty of ‘things’ to go around for everyone - we can’t do it all, nor should we. This sense of reality brings with it an opportunity to be empowered to take responsibility. Responsibility for what? We don’t decide how much time we have. But we do decide what tasks and things we want to do in that time.
How do you do it?
Whenever we feel the inevitable ‘I don’t have time’ coming on, it is an opportunity to reflect on our priorities and reevaluate them. Taking a look at what we do, perhaps in a week, can reveal what our priorities are - not what we’d like them to be, but what they really are. Having limited time forces us to make decisions - to prioritise those tasks and things that are most important to us and that bring us the most joy. We only have limited time, so decide what you want to do.
This is an empowering exercise - rather than being a hostage to time, we can take ownership for the decisions we make and responsibility for the priorities we set. When we feel like we’ve never got enough time or that time is running away from us, we’ve learnt to take this as an emergency flare. Not a flare to sound the alarm or beat ourselves up, but an opportunity to pause and reflect and ask those questions about what our priorities are or need to be, and how can we make that happen. A nice outcome of having this approach to time is that it enables you to say ‘no’ with confidence . If you know your priorities (which of course could be changed if new factors come into play), you know what tasks and things to do in the time you have. This keeps that nagging feeling of ‘not enough time’ at bay.
So, what do you want to do? What is most important to you? What brings you most joy? Do these things.
little BIG ideas
A little summary of this big idea using the 1000 most common words
‘There are not enough hours in the day’. Time can feel fast when we’re having fun or slow when we’re bored. We talk a lot about time and we can feel like we don't have enough time. But every day has the same number of hours for everyone. Knowing this is a good thing, and it helps us to know what to do and what not to do.