Most time management systems quite rightly focus on goal setting, intelligent prioritisation and improved interruption management. When we see time as a finite resource, with a forward arrow, this is a pretty good strategy. It is however a left-brained, orthogonal approach.
Time however is both malleable and stretchable and when we see it as something that can be manipulated to our advantage, there is a whole gamut of techniques we can use to get more done in less time. Our perception of time is a function of our consciousness and modulated by the speed of our breath.
Quite simply, when we change our mind, we change our time.
It is amazing how creative we can be at not getting on with the task in hand. When it comes to doing what we really should be doing, or what we would love to do, we invent excuses galore to not-do-it. In all cases, this sort of behaviour is a symptom of a deeper malaise. When we procrastinate creatively, we are masking and hiding an underlying fear. It might be a fear of failure or even a fear of success. It could be fear of the unknown or a fear of being ridiculed. Often, it has roots back to an earlier event where the wheels came off our bus.
Remove the fear and the creative spark gets redirected where it is needed.
Hack Two : Getting in Sync
Our man-made calendar and the 9 to 5 working week, when combined with 24×7 electric lighting, has resulted in us losing connection with natural cycles. Morning people just can’t produce as well in the afternoons. Each month, the Moon orbits our planet and has a massive impact on the creative cycle. Spring-time is the perfect time to leap into action and autumn is the perfect time to harvest.
When we go with the temporal flow, we stop pushing time uphill.
Hack Three : Kronos and Kairos
The Greeks knew this but only recently neuroscientists have re-discovered that we have two minds of time. For most people, the left brain sits inside space and time; simultaneously the right brain lives everywhere and ’everywhen’ else. Energise both hemispheres by going for a good walk, or cross crawling, or give them a task they work on together and time takes on an ethereal quality.
It is just like magic because all magic tricks are only magic until we know how the trick is done.
Hack Four : It’s Madness not to Meditate
It is thought that every minute spent in the deep meditative state extends our longevity by an equal amount of time, or more. Not only that but our well-being and vitality improves so we lose less time being ill, or just under the weather and under-performing. What’s more, when we take 10-20 minutes of “me-time” out every day, we get it back in spades with the serendipities and chance encounters we experience by being more tuned in.
Perfect opportunities come in when we least expect them too – and always just-in-time.
Hack Five : The Intention Field
Thoughts don’t become things, they are things. Every thought we have generates an intention field around it that sends ripples out through the collective mind that bounce back at us. Simply by engaging both hemispheres on a task, we send out a signal that we are busy. You will find the phone doesn’t ring when you are really zoned on a task in this manner.
The intention field gets generated automatically and requires no energy but a particular kind of breath – and we all have to breathe anyway.
Hack Six : Whole Mind Thinking
Our consciousness is sited all over our body and only concentrated around major nerve ganglia. As we have billions of neurons in our brains, for most people upon awakening, our inner dialogue naturally shouts the loudest. As a result, we assume our head is where all the ‘action’ is when it comes to matters of consciousness and awareness. This has the tendency of masking signals from other important nerve centres, specifically those in our heart and our gut. From an evolutionary perspective, these mind centres are older and in some ways wiser. They also operate a few seconds ahead of our conscious awareness and they are always, always right.
When we get our head, heart and gut in alignment, we become unstoppable.
Hack Seven : Letting Stuff Arrive
Rather than thinking we have to turn up, when you apply the six hacks above all together, all we have to do is to allow things to arrive. Life stops being a chore and we begin to enjoy a charmed existence.
Also what turns up is better than our wildest dreams and always perfectly timed.
Create as much time as you need and get more done
Some people appear to be born lucky. They land on their feet with effortless grace and ease. Life seems easy for them … Lucky B***ers!!
