Who’s ‘Watching’ Over You ?

Who’s ‘Watching’ Over You ?

by | Feb 11, 2016 | Timing

Someone is watching over you

watch [verb] : to observe, to keep a look out, to view
watch [noun] : a timepiece, a chronometer (worn on the wrist or carried in a pocket)

From when we are born until we leave the planet, time is superimposed upon us and someone or other seems to be ‘watching over you’.

We are indoctrinated with the notion of time from birth. Babies have times for feeding, changing, and bathing. Timetables regulate our school lessons. School-time all too quickly morphs into the nine to five of work-time. We intersperse our days with breakfast times, break times, lunch times, tea times, and supper times. Commuters just have to catch that train, right on time, so they can ‘clock in’ and ‘clock out’ at the end of their working day.

We have a bedtime and, before we know it, it’s time to get up again. Note that between these two times, when we are sleeping and dreaming, time takes on a different and ethereal quality. If you ever end up awake in the small hours, however, time can seem to stretch to eternity.

Our language, too, is littered with temporal references:

  • ‘Just a minute.’
  • ‘Give me a second.’
  • ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man.’
  • ‘Another day, another dollar.’
  • ‘That is so last season.’
  • ‘Holding back the years.’

Stop the World, I Want to Get Off

It seems that time is imposed upon us from birth right through to death, and that we cannot escape either its forward arrow or its grip. Yet, go back just 200 years or so, and nobody wore a watch. So this obsession with time is actually quite recent. In our so-called modern society, what is making this somewhat worse is that the world is permanently ‘switched on’. Before we had electric light, people snuffed out candles and went to sleep when it got dark.

The key to taking time back under our control lies in ‘watching’ ourselves internally. Firstly, take notice how the speed of time seems to vary depending on what we are doing and thinking. A busy weekend with friends seems to zoom by. An interminable wait in a doctor’s surgery seems to drag out forever. When we travel somewhere new, it seems to take longer than the journey back or the return trip. Secondly, reflect on days where you got lots done and on those days where you where pushing water up a temporal hill. Notice how you felt about those days before, during and after.

Synchronising with EMT

The passage of time is subjective and herein lies the clues on how we can control it, as opposed to it controlling us. The practice of mindfulness meditation is what opens the door to a new way of being that I call timefulness. Taking 10 minutes of ‘me time’ out each day is all that’s needed to slow time down and to get more done with less of it. With just a few days practice, we can enter Extended Me Time, or EMT. This is a luxurious state to be in where we become time lords, and of course time ladies.

When we sync with EMT, here’s what happens:

  • We get our creative tasks done, in what seems like ‘no time at all’
  • Interruptions are minimised
  • External events seem to happen ‘just in time’
  • Our stress levels reduce whilst our productivity increases
  • People want to learn our secret

p.s. I haven’t worn a watch for years and am rarely late 🙂

If you’d like to know more about how to manage the passage of time, as opposed it it managing you, get a copy of my new book Managing Time Mindfully. It comes with free guided meditations to give you the luxury of ‘me time’.

Managing Time Mindfully

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Switching to EMT

Switching to EMT

by | Feb 5, 2016 | Expanding

Extended Me Time – EMT

Entering Extended Me Time EMT

People of the world work to all sorts of different times standards. For some of the year, the UK is on GMT, at other times it shifts by an hour to BST. I interview guests for the Zone Show podcast on AEST, EDT, PST. The five time zones of China are harmonised, for simplicity, into one with the whole territory falling under Beijing Time, or CST.

International travellers sometimes don’t know what day it is, with their body clocks jumbled by the shifting of hours!

I’d like to propose a new common and simpler time standard that all humans switch to called EMT.

EMT stands for Extended Me Time. It is the ’time zone’ we switch to when time elongates and we get more done in less time. It is a magical and creative space where we are both ’in the zone’, while also ’zoning out’.

We can enter EMT simply by beginning each and every day with 10 or 20 minutes of ’me time’ in meditation. This is far from a waste of time. I discovered in my mid-40s that the days I took this time out when so much smoother and I got so much more done. There are also many benefits to our health and wellbeing such that it is thought every minute we spend meditating gets added to our life expectancy. If true, it’s a kind of madness not to meditate.

Throughout the day, and especially while working on creative tasks, with a little practice it becomes then possible to enter the meditative state with your eyes open. We truly enter EMT when we do this as time elongates. Simply put, we begin to control the speed at which time passes by and we get more done in less time.

There is more magic to unfold when we live in EMT. We begin to tap into aha moments on demand where bright ideas that change our world arrive in less than a second. They come from ’inside time’ and ’outside space’.

The regular practice of meditation, and adoption of EMT, also makes us luckier. We begin to notice serendipities that might otherwise slip by. People and events start turn up just at the perfect time. This of course all saves bags of time.

If you’d like to enter EMT and start meditating then I get the free Insight Timer app and I have uploaded a number of free meditations to help you get into EMT.

Get Insight Timer and access to my meditations here

If you’d like to know more about how to manage the passage of time, as opposed it it managing you, get a copy of my new book Managing Time Mindfully.

Managing Time Mindfully

Start Managing Your Time Mindfully

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A Synthesis of Time

by | Dec 16, 2015 | Timing

SeasonsAs we approach the feast of Christmas, very often another temporal milestone gets missed and that’s the Winter Solstice. Both dates have their significance and their differences.

The 25th December is a man-made date that some people use to either celebrate the birth of Christ and/or catch up with relatives. The Winter Solstice represents an alignment of the Earth relative to the Sun where some have their shortest day and others have their longest.

In our modern world, with central heating and electric light, we have somewhat distanced ourselves from Natural Time, yet it still has its usefulness.

I began to use Natural Time for project management about seven years ago and have discovered my life runs much more smoothly as a result.

At the same time though, without wearing a watch, I always know what time it is and am rarely late for meetings. Our modern calendar has its place, so long as we are mindful not to become enslaved by it.

Moon Phases

Accordingly, exactly on the last New Moon (the 11th of December), the next book in my series on practical applications of mindfulness was published. It’s called Managing Time Mindfully and the synthesis of two calendar systems is just one of the temporal delights it explores.

It’s available worldwide for Amazon Kindle and Kindle Readers and I bent some time so readers in the UK can get the print version (and via Amazon early in 2016).

Big thanks to all those who placed a pre-order, you helped me get it into the Top #100 books on time management. I’d love to get it into the Top #10 so, by way of thanks for all those who get a copy, there’s a free pack of meditations available for all who place an order before the end of the year (which incidentally is another man-made date).

If you’d like to get more done next year than this year, get your copy here …

Managing Time Mindfully

p.s. you would make my day and my aim from the book is that is that it helps you get more done, more easily with yours !

What one reader said about the book …

Related Posts :

Publishing in Tune with the Moon
Quarter 1 : First Tickings
Quarter 2 : Perceptions of Time
Quarter 3 : Managing Time
Quarter 4 : Temporal Alchemy

Publishing in Tune with the Moon

First Tickings

Perceptions of Time

Managing Time

Temporal Alchemy

Managing Time

by | Dec 3, 2015 | Timing

Quarter 3 : Five Temporal Takeaways

This is the third of four sneak previews of what’s inside my forthcoming book, Managing Time Mindfully, published on the 11th December 2015.

Managing Time Mindfully
Clock

Temporal Takeaway #1:
When we procrastinate, we often become creatively uncreative and engage in everything else other than what we really should be working on. This is often a sign that a fear is lurking in our unconscious mind.

Clock

Temporal Takeaway #2:
We are awake for around 60,000 seconds each day. This leaves around 26,400 seconds to sleep and half of that again to dream. If you seed your dreams and learn how to remember and analyse them, this is not wasted time but creative time.

Clock

Temporal Takeaway #3:
Nothing in nature beats to the seconds other than the thoughts of somebody who is watching a clock.

Clock

Temporal Takeaway #4:
When we get in tune with the Moon, we stop pushing water uphill and go with the temporal flow.

Clock

Temporal Takeaway #5:
Every year, we all travel together over half a billions miles through space around the Sun on a spaceship we call Earth. It kind of makes sense if we all got along.

Clock
p.s. this blog was posted live exactly at 7:40 GMT on the 3rd December, the 2nd quarter of the Moon Phase

Managing Time MindfullyThese themes and more are explored in the third quarter of my new book, Managing Time Mindfully, which is published on the 11th December — the exact date of the next New Moon.

Order your copy today and get free access to the Your Perfect Day pack of meditations, to help you get more done in less time.

Get your copy of Manage Your Time Mindfully here

Your Perfect Day Meditations

Related Posts :

Publishing in Tune with the Moon
Quarter 1 : First Tickings
Quarter 2 : Perceptions of Time
Quarter 4 : Temporal Alchemy
November Moon Phases

Perceptions of Time

by | Nov 25, 2015 | Timing

Quarter 2 : Five Temporal Takeaways

This is the second of four sneak previews of what’s inside my forthcoming book, Managing Time Mindfully, being published on the 11th December

Perceptions of Time Infographic
Clock

Temporal Takeaway #1:
The idea that the left brain is logical and the right brain is creative has become an urban myth. A better approximation is that the left brain sits inside space and time and the right brain site everywhere and ‘everywhen’ else. This is still a gross simplification and approximation.

Clock

Temporal Takeaway #2:
The Ancient Greeks had a god named Kronos who looked after matters on the Earth plane. Their god called Kairos concerned himself with managing the heavens. This is perhaps a more accurate model for how the left and right brain operate, whilst being more metaphorical.

Clock

Temporal Takeaway #3:
Our gut, or enteric, mind has more neurons that a cat’s brain. It operates around 5 to 10 seconds ahead of our conscious mind and is always, always right.

Clock

Temporal Takeaway #4:
Most people are intrinsically around 33% efficient. As the normal human mind can only hold one thought at a time, if we mull over the past or worry about the future, we lose focus on what we are doing right now..

Clock

Temporal Takeaway #5:
Every minute spent in meditation comes back to us many times over. We get the time back in spades. Our creativity, luck, productivity and longevity all benefit. Regular meditation can even allow us to live weller longer.

Clock
p.s. this blog was posted live exactly on the 25th November, timed with the Full Moon

Managing Time MindfullyThese themes and more are explored in the second quarter of my new book, Managing Time Mindfully, which is published on the 11th December — the exact date of the next New Moon.

Order your copy today and get free access to the Your Perfect Day pack of meditations, to help you get more done in less time.

Get your copy of Manage Your Time Mindfully here

Your Perfect Day Meditations

Related Posts :

Publishing in Tune with the Moon
Quarter 1 : First Tickings
Quarter 3 : Managing Time
Quarter 4 : Temporal Alchemy
November Moon Phases