Whatever happened to all the time?
The irrepressible ability of man to change the environment around him to suit his needs combined with an overwhelming urge to find more time in every unit of time, has, over generations, changed the dynamics of how time is perceived and what man has wanted to do with it.
The intent of every invention, innovation and in a broader sense, change, has always been to free up man’s time for bigger pursuits and better application of his time. In a sense, it is to overcome today’s challenges, make them a lesser occupation, and use the freed up time to embrace newer challenges. Somewhere along the road, the stuff man did centuries, decades or years back continue to be done. Only, they are done in lesser time and man has found more stuff to fill the freed up time with. This, no doubt, is very useful for progress and evolution.
However, the hyper-compartmentalization of every unit of the biological clock has led to the hands of time becoming the sands of time. The amount of time that someone can focus on any one given thing has dramatically dwindled. If there is one single epidemic inflicting the human psyche in this day and age, it is the attention deficiency syndrome. Sit back and observe people around you to see what I mean!
If there is one or two things that are low down in the priority list and therefore are compromised, they do not free up enough time any longer for someone to be able to put it to any productive use; because they did not take up enough contiguous time in the first place to free up anything of consequence. So what does one do if one had 10, 20 or 30 minutes freed up from two compromised chores? A power jog because you do not have time enough for a normal jog or walk, browse for the shortest route to office (so you can free up the next 10 minutes!!) or the best value offer on the hot new smartphone out in the market (so you can browse on the move and save the next 2 minutes!!).
And incidentally, what does one do with the time one does manage to free up? Find some pursuits that would help free up a little more time! Well, it is a vicious circle. This is somewhat like Kiyosaki’s rat race in a financial context!
So how does one find the time and what does one do with it?
First things first, you do not find time by freeing it up. You find time by finding something worthwhile to do, to start with. If you want it bad enough, you will find time to do it. You find time by prioritizing – doing the things that you want to do most, first, and so on. The second thing to keep in mind is that anything creative, cerebral, soul-searching, touching others’ lives, meaningful, at least for the majority of us, is seldom achievable in the ‘minutes’ timeframe that we have been talking about and freeing up. Those things, presumably the most important ones, take significant amount of contiguous time, and more importantly, ‘uncluttered mind time’. The third, and most important aspect to finding time is the appreciation that the process is internal – no one can find your time for you (remember it is not about freeing it up!), you have to find it yourself.
So, go right ahead and grab what is rightfully yours, and yours only!
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