What is time? And why don’t we have enough of it?
Next to “Oh it’s too hot” or “What? It’s raining again!” isn’t the most often used phrases in the English language are “Sorry I’m late” or “I don’t have time for that” or “Oh no I’m too busy”?
I was on a conference call with some clients earlier on and when going through various discussions about how to progress in a particular section of our work the question of time came up. As to how little time people have to work, play and rest or to be more accurate how little time there is to incorporate coaching into work, rest and play.
It seems we spend an awful lot of time doing something and when we talk about any new direction or any new adventure in our lives, there is no time for it.
We want to have that new result or that new sale or that new book done it’s – “Not right now! I don’t have time for it!” or “Oh god! Do I have to do that to get that?”
It seems we talk about all these grand plans etc for our future or how we might grow as a business or an employee or how we might take on this new challenge but when “now” is at hand we have no time for it. And what there is time for is the usual day to day stuff such as dealing with the kids, bringing a new piece of business in or finishing off something left from last week.
Obviously there is only 24 hours in a day and that is that, and then time for sleep etc. But the rest of the time from the time when we get up and the time when we go to bed seems to disappear into something called “business”. A kind of fuzzy abyss where “automaticity” takes over the consciousness or being present to now and action goes missing.
It seems that we are on a mission. The mission is to get by and prevail. Pay the rent and put the meal on the table so the kids don’t go hungry. Hold onto what we got. “Let me get from a to b and forget Z, never mind all that other stuff.”
If you look at this “automaticity” carefully there is a lot of sitting and thinking time, there is a lot of distracting time and for example for me right now, it began by me thinking about this thing called time and being inspired to write something about it then the next minute I’m off…..And my mind wanders to questions like, “can’t you do something more useful with this time?” “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time right now?” “Well if they’re not bothered why are you so bothered?”
See, it involves a process of talking to yourself all the time about everything. If you look at any action you need to take in a day and see how much time is spent on that internal chatter, it is really astounding we get anything done at all. That internal chatter takes up a lot of time, at the time of writing this piece, it is taking me twice as much time to write and listen to what my internal chatter has to say about it. And there seems to be nothing we can do about it and most people aren’t aware of an “Internal what?”
May be our talk about lack of time is a validation of the time spent in that automatic/instant chatter. Being lost in an eternal internal dialogue and not waking up. and when we do “where has the time gone by?”
“Oh no I don’t have time for this now!” “Got to go!”