The Five Bandits of Time

The normal human mind can only have one thought at a time.

Just think about what you are thinking about and the thing you are thinking about gets replaced with the thought you are having about that thought.

Just read the above sentence again, pause from reading this article and just check the validity of this notion.

So armed with this new knowledge about the way we think, this gives us the most amazing insight when it comes to our time management.

“If we are focused on anything else other than the task in hand, time will slip away from us.”

So just think about this for a few seconds, these are the Five Bandits of Time …

  1. Switching away from the current task
  2. Being diverted away from the current task
  3. Fretting over the past
  4. Worrying about the future
  5. Thinking about something too much

If you read conventional time management books, they will be awash with tips and techniques on how to priortise better and how to stop interruptions. I recommend Time Management for Dummies, by Clare “no relation” Evans, to help with these first two Time Bandits.

There is nothing much out there that deals with the last three Time Bandits though – until now that is !!!!

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Change the way you think and add hours to your days

Many time management systems teach you how to better prioritise and how to beat procrastination. This system is fundamentally different – it shows you how to change the speed of your thoughts, using meditative and mindfullness techniques, so you change the subjective passage of time.

Learn how to control your own Personal Time Machine – your Mind.

This ecourse contains over four hours of mind altering exercises and visualisations to take you into altered and heightened states of consciousness. The programme is simple to follow, completely safe and also very, very relaxing.

Take some Time Out to give yourself more Me-Time and you will get your investment back in this revolutionary time management programme in no time at all.

Manage Your Time with Mindfulness

This course on bendy time is based on bendy pricing – you only pay what you can afford


Related posts:

Time Management Strategies
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Clocks of Money
Time Heals
Sixty Second Time Tips

Creativity Blocks #005: Lack of Time

One of the most common complaints you hear nowadays is that there is not enough time.

The world is speeding up – we are being bombarded by TV, news, social media – how is it possible to keep up?

Well it’s a common misconception that the march of time and it’s ticking clock is both fixed and immutable.

You hear people saying things like, “You can’t change the past” and “There are simply not enough hours in the day.”

Both these statements are not necessarily true.

It’s also said that, if you want something done, give it to a busy person. I even heard someone say once that they didn’t have enough time to read a time management book !!

Well there’s two books I recommend highly both that take a different approach, mentioned at the bottom of this blog … but even they don’t really show how time can be bent, managed and stretched.

It’s all in mind

Now this might seem far fetched, or in the realms of Doctor Who or Back to the Future, but scientists are coming to the conclusion that our reality – our space and time – are linked to our consciousness. In fact, it’s more accurate to say that it’s our very consciousness that actually creates our reality and space and time. So all you need to do to change time is to make a change in your consciousness.

A fly and an elephant both perceive time differently to us … and I for one have noticed a difference in peoples’ cognitive reaction time. Have you ever tried to swat a fly only for it to seem to know where you are about to strike? It’s nerve signals don’t have to travel as far as ours so its physiology and neurology means it reacts quicker.

I am sure you have heard about athletes who have been “in the zone” – a sort of timeless place – or perhaps you have had a light bulb moment where in less than a second, you get a flash of inspiration – a whole picture for a new idea. If you were able to MRI scan your brain at this moment, you would see both the right and left hemispheres light up in synchronism. For that split second you were Whole Brain (or even Whole Mind) Thinking. A brain scan would show that your brain was generating alpha and probably even theta waves.

It is now thought our left brain sits in space and time and our right brain everywhere and “every-when” else. By making our left brain go silent and work in harmony with our right, our perception of the speed of time changes.

Now you can access this state while meditating. When I mention this to people, their first reaction is that they don’t have time to meditate. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but I can testify that 20-30 minutes meditation before any creative session will deliver not only the time back by a factor of 3 or 4 but also produce the most sublime output that appears to have come from nowhere.

“But I can’t make my mind go quiet,” is normally the next protest swiftly followed by, “I’d like to meditate but I don’t have time to learn how.”

Well, if you hear yourself saying this, help is now at hand. You don’t need necessarily to enter an ashram for two months. Although, if you did, it might well be time well spent …

Have a listen to this audio track to learn a routine you can use anytime and anywhere – great also for getting back to sleep in the early hours – but not as one client of mind did for listening to while driving !!!

By practicing getting into this state while your eyes are open, you will find time changes its speed … and you will get more done in less time !!!

Create as much time as you need and get more done

Living Timefully

Recommended Reading

If what I’ve written above it just too whacky and you just want to better manage your day and “claw back” time, then read Time Management for Dummies by Clare Evans (no relation).

I also recommend getting hold of a copy of Steven Taylor’s excellent book called Making Time – it explains in some detail how consciousness and time are interrelated and how you can start to control time to your advantage.

Steve Taylor : Out of the Darkness

One of the best things about being an author is getting to talk to other authors – especially those writing in a similar field to you.

One of the writers I have admired for many years who has been really generous with reviews of my books is Steve Taylor.

Even more of a coincidence is that we’re both Manchester lads exploring consciousness and what it means to be human.

So I was thrilled to speak to Steve recently for my Moments of Light show on Barefoot Radio about his new book, Out of Darkness. Naturally, we covered the others too … namely The Fall, Making Time and Waking from Sleep.

Useful Links

Steve’s web site
Steve’s books

Making Time

There are two really common reasons why authors and bloggers get writer’s block.

The first is a lack of inner confidence about their writing ability.

The second is a belief that they simply don’t have the time to write.

These first types of blocks caused by lack of confidence can be caused by an innocent criticism of something written earlier – like an essay that got a black mark at school perhaps.

The solution is to identify the old gestalts and replace them with new patterns that are much more useful. Note though that this doesn’t mean deleting bad memories though as these are useful source material for a writer.

Incidentally, these first type of blocks are something I deal with in more detail in my book Blocks …

To deal with the second type of block, perceived lack of time, there are many excellent books on how to improve your time management. One I specifically recommend for authors is Time Management for Dummies by Clare (no relation) Evans.

Books like this are brilliant at pointing out where you can claw back time by better managing your day. Additionally, I would like to propose a more lateral and fundamental approach to time management – and that’s to change the perceived speed of time itself.

Now this might seem far fetched, or in the realms of Doctor Who or Back to the Future, but scientists are coming to the conclusion that our reality – our space and time – are linked to our consciousness. In fact, it’s more accurate to say that it’s our very consciousness that actually creates our reality. So all you need to do to change time is to make a change in your consciousness.

I am sure you have heard about athletes who have been “in the zone” – a sort of timeless place – or perhaps you have had a light bulb moment where in less than a second, you get a flash of inspiration – a whole picture for a new idea. If you were able to MRI scan your brain at this moment, you would see both the right and left hemispheres light up in synchronism. For that split second you were Whole Brain (or even Whole Mind) Thinking. A brain scan would show that your brain was generating alpha and probably even theta waves.

Now you can access this state while meditating. When I mention this to authors, their first reaction is that they don’t have time to meditate. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but I can testify that 20-30 minutes meditation before a writing session will deliver not only the time back by a factor of 3 or 4 but also much better quality writing.

“But I can’t make my mind go quiet,” is normally the next protest swiftly followed by, “I’d like to meditate but I don’t have time to learn how.”

Well, if you hear yourself saying this, help is now at hand. You don’t need necessarily to enter an ashram.

This visualisation will help you experience the meditative state in just 11 minutes …

iPad or no Flash? Listen here

After you’ve listened to it a few times, you will even find it easier to enter the meditative state while you are in what is normally thought of as the waking state.

For a writer, this become significant as time seems to stretch out so that in a single hour you write what would normally take a whole morning or afternoon.

The benefits to your productivity are therefore immense and you will be amazed at your output in all areas of your life. People who have used machines even get comments of how well they look.

Addendum:

I can highly recommend reading Steven Taylor’s excellent book called Making Time – it explains in great detail on how this all works and how you can start to control time to your advantage.

More details on Making Time here …

For more details on my book Blocks and the accompanying visualisations – see here