by Tom Evans | Nov 19, 2015 | Timing
Quarter 1 : Five Temporal Takeaways
This is the first of four sneak previews of what’s inside my forthcoming book, Managing Time Mindfully, being published on the 11th December
Temporal Takeaway #1:
It is thought that space and time were formed from the seed of the Big Bang. It took many billions of years though before time-as-we-know-it really got going. What we now refer to days and years only started when 3rd generation stars with rocky planets formed.
Temporal Takeaway #2:
On planet Earth, at least, time-as-we-know-it only started ticking when life formed around 3 billion years ago. The clock of time only ticks with the presence of an observer.
Temporal Takeaway #3:
The first pocket watches were only created in the 1675 by Christiaan Huygens. They were accurate to about 10 minutes a day. The accuracy of an Apple Watch is around 50 milliseconds.
Temporal Takeaway #4:
The need for global harmonisation of time came about from an increase in international travel by steamship and cross-continental travel with the railways. Time zones were created at International Meridian Conference in 1884.
Temporal Takeaway #5:
Seconds, minutes, hours, weeks and months are man-made and do not exist in nature. Although they allow us to run our modern world, some of us have become enslaved by the ticking of self-imposed clocks.
p.s. this blog was posted live exactly at 6:27 GMT on the 19th November, the 1st quarter of the Moon Phase
by Tom Evans | Oct 13, 2015 | Timing
Last week while away on what was to be a walking holiday, an unexpected broken leg meant I ended up writing a little more than I planned. The Universe obviously had a different type of ’break’ in mind for me.
I wrote a few months worth of my mindful Just for Today messages and mind mapping the next book in my series on practical mindfulness, which is entitled “Managing Time Mindfully”. I had the light bulb moment that the book ought to be structured in four quarters each with 3 chapters – i.e. mimicking a clock face with its quarters and a year with its seasons.
The new structure will lead me to explore the very nature of time, and our perception of it, in a much more expansive manner than I had previously planned.
While mapping the chapters on Natural Time, a second idea came along that I ought to publish the next book on a New Moon. I realised in my exhuberance to publish the first introductory book in the series, Mindful Timeful Kindful, I had paid no attention to when I published it.
I imagine my delight and surprise when I found it was published on the 13th September – you guessed it, the last New Moon.
This blog is purposely timed for the exact time of October’s New Moon and my publishing plan for the next few ’moonths’ has been ’given’ to me. Each book will get to 1st draft for the New Moon prior to its publication. This of course is nicely self-fulfilling and what happens when we live timefully.
by Tom Evans | Mar 14, 2015 | Timing
If we all take a little me time each day, our world and the world as a whole would be a much calmer and enjoyable place to be. Watch this short two minute video to open the door to a better world.
After watching it at the start of every day for a week, you will notice the following:
- Decreased stress
- Increased luck
- Increased vitality
- Increased creativity
- Increased productivity
by Tom Evans | Feb 26, 2015 | Timing
This year, I have launched a philanthropic initiative to share the Living Timefully resources with people with life shortening conditions.
It’s with great pleasure that I am able to share (anonymously) the feedback from one of the first people who took the program under this scheme.
If you know someone who could benefit, they can apply for complementary access here …
1. How did you come across Living Timefully?
Through Lea Woodward who gave me the link to your free Be Calm meditation. Then from there I got to learn and discover more about your work.
2. What did you hope to gain from taking the course?
To reduce or try to handle my stress better. After using the Be Calm meditation, I felt it could be most helpful with handling my stress. That is when you started generously offering the Living Timefully program to people who like me need help to handle the little time they have. It felt like really timely indeed.
3. What did you learn from taking it?
I learned a lot about myself and my relationship with time. Starting with discovering and putting on paper where time goes was a life changing exercise, literally!
It has allowed me to see and come to terms with different aspects of my life as it is today, that were previously blocking me from moving forward with my life and projects or that were keeping me in the same loop.
I have confirmed something I knew yet did not know about the past, future and present. With the meditation from the Future Time week, I was able to actually get messages in and from time that have proved really useful.
4. What was your favourite take away?
Would you believe before your Be Calm meditation, I was not much of a meditation kind of person? I had tried meditating in the past but was never able to get deep with it. That free introductory meditation really made a difference.
Second the feeling that the threatening pressure of time has greatly receded in my life.
5. How would you describe it to somebody if you only had 30 seconds in an elevator
It is an online program over 10 weeks, every week you receive access the videos and audios giving you a greater outlook on life as we see it. You gently, slowly get to realise there is not only more to life than meet the eye there is deeper, higher, wider and then more too. It is a soft, gentle, step by step journey that releases its effect over time as you build the routine in your life. It is very practical with manageable steps everyone can apply and enjoy.
by Tom Evans | Feb 23, 2015 | Timing
We can be very creative about not being creative. When we schedule time for our creative activities, quite often other more pressing tasks pop up. As a result, our books don’t get written and deadlines move from being comfortable to being tight.
There is a knack to scheduling creatively which involves going with the temporal flow. When we block out creative times wisely, we find we can get more done, more easily.
One of the factors which mitigates against us is the modern calendar. Our modern time systems are brilliant when it comes to allowing us to operate in a sophisticated society. We don’t want all planes to arrive at an airport just when they feel like it. It’s nice to be able to turn up to the theatre and for it to start on time, on the date that we’ve booked.
We should be minded though that seconds, minutes, hours, weeks and months don’t exist in nature, they are man-made. Likewise the names of the days of the week and the division between working week and weekend are arbitrary. Not everyone on the planet has Saturday and Sunday as their weekend, for example.
The varying lengths of the months are made up too. The only real time constants are the day and the year which are of course driven by the rotation of the Earth and its orbit around the Sun. Even these vary quite a bit and our 24 hour days and 365.25 day years are only averages. The tugging and pulling between the planets in our Solar System make everything a bit fluid and variable.
When we superimpose false deadlines inside our time system, it is often hard to be at our creative peak just at the perfect time. Of course, we can use tools and practices like meditation and mind mapping to help us out of our creative log jams. The best way by far to be superbly creative though is for us to schedule our creative tasks around the times where we are most productive.
Firstly, we can easily identify when we are most creative in the day. I am a morning person and I always write between 8am and 11am, as I am doing with this article right now. I also meditate before each writing session but that’s just a practice I use to tune into my Creative Muse.
The second trick I use is to give the days of my week my own names on which I focus on different aspects of my business. You can have some creative fun making up your own.
See the blog, My Magical Week for more on this and to see how others have done it too !!
Once we get our days sorted, we can superimpose two other overarching slants on our creative output.
The first is to tune into the phase of the Moon. I have noticed I get much better results if I plan between the New Moon and Full Moon and act and deliver between Full Moon and New Moon. I also believe that it doesn’t matter if the Moon affects our creativity or not but that the oscillation between planning and action gives us space to breathe, reflect and measure how we are doing. There are more subtle divisions to use with the quarter phases of the Moon but this simple method is very workable.
By the way, if you don’t know what the Moon phase is, there are loads of free smartphone apps these days. I’ve also found that inspirational talks and workshops work well when timed on or around the Full Moon. New concepts and product launches on the New Moon seem to swimmingly too.
The second aspect to bear in mind is which season we are in. Only after writing my first three books did I notice that I had created them all in Spring. So now I plan and research my next book in Autumn and Winter and start writing it in earnest on the Spring Equinox.
Now if all of this sounds a bit wacky and you think I have lost my marbles, let me add some caveats. Firstly, each of us is free to tune into our own creative cycles. There is no creed or religion to follow here. Secondly, any system like this works exactly because it gives us a framework to follow. Our outputs are the only measure of its efficacy.
We should never limit our creativity either. My iPad is always to hand to capture words, speech, art, maps of my mind and images or even video, should the Muse call.
To find out more about how I schedule my day, check out my interview and loads more fabulous articles in the latest multimedia edition of Time Management Magazine.
by Tom Evans | Feb 13, 2015 | Timing
One of the great bonuses about running your own podcast is the wonderful conversations it leads to with people you could otherwise never meet.
If lack of time is something that gives you some concern, these interviews will give you some insights on how to make the most of it.
Inventor, horologist and philanthropist, Dr John C Taylor OBE, shares his wisdom on innovation and all things temporal.
Find out more about John and his amazing time-eating clock, the Chronophage, at http://www.johnctaylor.com/
A temporal chat with Glenn Watt, the editor of Time Management magazine, on simple ways to get more done in our days.
For another interesting conversation on time, Glenn interviews me on my left field approach to time management in the latest multimedia edition of Time Management Magazine.
Subscribe today for iPad or Android here …
These themes and more are explored in the first quarter of my new book, Managing Time Mindfully, which is published on the 11th December — the exact date of the next New Moon.
This year, I have launched a philanthropic initiative to share the Living Timefully resources with people with life shortening conditions.
We can be very creative about not being creative. When we schedule time for our creative activities, quite often other more pressing tasks pop up. As a result, our books don’t get written and deadlines move from being comfortable to being tight.
The first is to tune into the phase of the Moon. I have noticed I get much better results if I plan between the New Moon and Full Moon and act and deliver between Full Moon and New Moon. I also believe that it doesn’t matter if the Moon affects our creativity or not but that the oscillation between planning and action gives us space to breathe, reflect and measure how we are doing. There are more subtle divisions to use with the quarter phases of the Moon but this simple method is very workable.
The second aspect to bear in mind is which season we are in. Only after writing my first three books did I notice that I had created them all in Spring. So now I plan and research my next book in Autumn and Winter and start writing it in earnest on the Spring Equinox.
