Make friends with time
Reinventing our relationship with time
By Kim Deans
What if time management is not a solution, and it is part of our problem? I have tried plenty of forms of time management that glorify busy, that keep us on a treadmill of endless doing and feed the belief that our self-worth is related to how much we do, rather than inherent in who we are being. These approaches to time management encourage us to buy into a version of success that relies on doing more, not being more. Part of my regenerative journey is exploring a different way.
There is no denying that there are many factors outside of our control contributing to the epidemic of overwhelm many of us are facing at present, particularly the challenges those in business have in finding labour. When we focus on these issues that are outside of our control our circle of influence shrinks. When we focus instead on the aspects of these challenges that are within our control our circle of influence expands. In the case of time management, focusing on what we can control creates increased mental capacity to make decisions around how we can do the most important things with less labour, and to see opportunities to simplify we might otherwise miss.
In the height of the busiest period in my life, when we were deep in the trenches of raising our young family alongside working full time, and weekend farming in all our spare time I remember bringing home a time management book called “Getting things done.” Angus looked at me in disbelief when he saw the book and asked me why I wanted to get even more done? His question fell on deaf ears, and I worked my way through the book looking for the solution to achieving more, as though the superhuman efforts I was already making were not enough.
A few years later, long after I discarded the methods in this book, (even just thinking about them created more overwhelm than before), I started to question all this endless doing and busyness. It was exhausting and there had to be a better way. I realised I had gotten to the point that when people asked me how I was, my standard answer was “busy”! Looking back, I can see how I had bought into the belief that being busy meant I was successful, important, or valued. A belief that more was always better. Fortunately, I started to consider all this doing from another perspective. I decided to stop saying that I was busy, and then realised how deeply this madness has seeped into our culture when if I did not say how busy I was, people started telling me how “I must be busy!”
At its core, regeneration is relational not transactional. As we regenerate, we repair our relationship with the natural world and realise we are a part of nature, not separate from it. When we orient relationally, we stop seeing nature transactionally as a commodity we extract money from. Everything is interconnected and we also begin to realise we are not a commodity we extract from either. Regeneration brings us into relationship with ourselves and how we steward our time, energy, and financial resources to serve life. We cannot be regenerative if we are constantly busy, exhausted, depleted and running ourselves down in the process.
Reinventing our relationship with time, impacts every area of our life, because at its core time is all we really have. What I have realised is that it’s not about managing our time; it is about managing ourselves. We all get 24 hours in every day. We can’t save this time for later or borrow more. We can only decide how we make the best use of every day. Some concepts that are helping me on the journey to reinvent my relationship with time are:
Becoming mindful
Words matter. Getting curious about what we hear ourselves say about time is a powerful first step. When words like “I don’t have enough time” or “I have too much to do” are high on rotation, we are focusing on not having enough hours in the day, so we are always behind, chasing our tail. Noticing words that we use to describe time helps grow our awareness of the belief systems behind how we relate to time. When we stop using words that reinforce time scarcity and reframe to shift our focus towards words that reinforce time prosperity how we experience time shifts as well. Instead of saying we don’t have time, we can choose instead to say, “that’s not a priority right now”.
Becoming effective
We can’t know if something is not a priority right now if we don’t make time to establish our priorities so we can be effective. Success comes from doing the most important things, not doing everything. When we prioritise what is important it is easier to ignore what is not. Keeping our priorities manageable is the key. When we have more than 3 priorities, we have none! When we schedule the most important tasks, we can focus on getting these done instead of focusing on not having enough time to do it all.
Becoming reflective
Having space in our schedule is just as important as what we put in our schedule. Without space we don’t make the time to set our priorities and focus on the most important things. If there is no wriggle room for regrouping when things don’t go to plan it doesn’t take much to derail us from our priorities. Spaciousness also allows time for reflection so we can be more present and effective. A reflective practice where we regularly build in time to stop and notice what we have achieved, areas for improvement and what we have learned builds a time prosperity mindset through appreciating what we have instead of only focusing on everything that we don’t yet have (time scarcity mindset).
Becoming enough
Enough is a decision, not an amount. When we choose quality over quantity, we are choosing what is enough for us personally. Our personal “enough” is ours alone and we don’t need to justify, explain it or compare it to anyone else’s. Realising what is enough is how we put an end to glorifying busy and the endless pursuit of more of everything so we can focus on the most meaningful work we can be doing. When we tap into the work that gives us the most meaning we can find our flow, rather than pushing up hill and never feeling like we are getting anywhere.
Becoming self-aware
There are no shortage of time management systems, courses, and planners we can buy promising to be everything that we need to get our act together. I personally have tried a few, others have left me feeling overwhelmed at the mere thought of them. I have learned through this process how there is no one best way to manage ourselves, the best organisational system is the one we will actually use! We are all individuals and a system that one person loves can completely miss the mark for another. Over time I have developed a system that works for my individual thinking style that continues to evolve as my awareness of myself evolves. I have also realised that the people I coach and teach have their own individual thinking styles and my way may not always work for them. Instead of creating the perfect system for all, working as individuals to craft a system that works for us based on an understanding of our thinking style is how to best activate our potential to make the most of our time.
There is no external, perfect solution for our time management challenges. Improving our effectiveness is a capacity that can only be built from within. Once we start being mindful of the words we use to describe time, we start becoming more aware of our beliefs around time. Our mindset is the foundation of improving our effectiveness, the system we use to manage our time (ourselves) is secondary. If we are operating from a belief that productivity and being busy make us valuable or successful, we will tend to schedule ourselves beyond capacity, constantly jamming more and more into our already overflowing schedule. Shifting our beliefs shifts the energy we bring to our time, so we can release ourselves from the hustle and choose to relate to time with a calm presence instead. Our experience of time is relative to the energetic state we are in. When we are rushing time speeds up, when we are fully present time slows down. Which you choose is up to you.
Email Kim to make a time for a chat about whether coaching is a fit for your needs to get you out of overwhelm and into flow.
Download Kim’s Activate your Potential 2024 yearly planner to see if this process fit your style.
Further reading:
Enough is a decision, not an amount.
Cultivating patience and resisting the temptation of the quick fix.