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This might be a little ambitious, but for today’s ‘Midweek Musing’, I thought I’d tackle time.
Do you ever feel like time is speeding up… that each year flies by quicker than the last… that life is flashing past the window like a blur?
It’s something I’ve been reflecting on, and chatting to a few Exec Coaching clients about, recently. In a conversation with a client a few weeks ago, we started to unpick it. In particular, we asked…
Why does it happen?
and
What can we do about it?
Here’s a little snippet from my notes…
I suspect there are a few reasons for this. Firstly, as we get older, a year becomes a smaller proportion of our life. When we’re 4 years old, a year is a quarter of a life. When we’re 40, it’s only 1/40th. But, I don’t think that’s the only issue.
The modern world (and social norms) encourages us to pack more into the time we have and get more out of the time we have. For decades, there has been a relentless drive to be more productive, squeeze more out of every hour, to multi-task, etc. In doing so, we eradicate ‘spare time’.
The problem is… our perception and experience of “having time” requires us to have ‘spare time’… unallocated time. It’s based on the amount of time we have to stop, think, breathe & reflect.
To slow down time (or at least create that sensation), we need more unallocated time.
So, here’s an idea…
In every moment, we have an expanse of unallocated, ‘spare’ time in front of us. If we choose not to allocate it to something… if we choose to leave it, rather than fill it by checking emails or doing stuff… we will feel like we’re slowing down time.
It led me to the understanding that there’s a huge difference between doing nothing and wasting time. Doing nothing can be incredibly valuable.
And
You can be really busy and wasting time.
This is just an idea. What do you think?
Does it make sense to you?
Could we ‘slow down time’, by creating more spare, unallocated time?
Let me know what you think!!