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.
As 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.
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).
This is the last of four sneak previews of what’s inside my forthcoming book, Managing Time Mindfully, published on the 11th December 2015
Temporal Takeaway #1:
We can become hampered and restricted in how we operate in the present by what has occurred in the past. Past life regression is quick, safe and effective as a therapy and doesn’t require a belief in reincarnation for it to work.
Temporal Takeaway #2:
We are as able to tune into ‘future memories’ as we are to past memories. This is how imagination and prescience works.
Temporal Takeaway #3:
We are all natural channels and oracles. All the great artists possessed the ability to tune into divine inspiration.
Temporal Takeaway #4:
Light bulb, or aha, moments occur outside space and inside time. They are whole mind and body events.
Temporal Takeaway #5:
Time is as malleable a dimension as any of the three physical dimensions. The instrument with which we manipulate it is our mind.
These themes and more are explored in the fourth 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.
This is the third of four sneak previews of what’s inside my forthcoming book, Managing Time Mindfully, published on the 11th December 2015.
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.
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.
Temporal Takeaway #3:
Nothing in nature beats to the seconds other than the thoughts of somebody who is watching a clock.
Temporal Takeaway #4:
When we get in tune with the Moon, we stop pushing water uphill and go with the temporal flow.
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.
p.s. this blog was posted live exactly at 7:40 GMT on the 3rd December, the 2nd quarter of the Moon Phase
These 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.
This is the second of four sneak previews of what’s inside my forthcoming book, Managing Time Mindfully, being published on the 11th December
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
p.s. this blog was posted live exactly on the 25th November, timed with the Full Moon
These 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.
