by Tom Evans | Dec 18, 2013 | Timing
How many times do we get to the end of a day and wonder where the time went?
Despite our best intent, our To Do List appears to have grown longer, not shorter.
How can we begin to control the flow of time?
Well most time management techniques use goal setting, prioritization and management of interruption as their basis. These principles are laudable and useful but there is something else we can do which is much more powerful and that’s to take better control of our own personal time machine – our mind.
1. Many people are only 33% efficient
A clue to where some the time goes lies in an often over-looked aspect of our consciousness. The normal human mind is only capable of experiencing one thought at a time. Just think about what you are thinking right now and notice how what you are thinking about gets replaced by a new thought. You may need to think about that!
In a normal day, our thoughts often wander. We might think about what we are doing in the future, like what we’re having for supper or rehearsing a speech. We might dwell on the past and repeat a conversation that we wish had gone better. When we mull over the past or fret about the future, this has the result of disrupting our efficiency in the Now.
Time Tip #1 : when thoughts of the past or the future pop along, just ask them politely to go away and come back when you are ready to deal with them. A thought cannot resist being thought about and will vaporise when we ’talk to it’ in this manner.
2. Slowing Down is the New Speeding Up
Before I started meditating in my mid-40’s, I thought it was a waste of time. I was far too busy to fritter away even 10 minutes a day and there was no way I could make my active mind go quiet.
Nowadays I know that if I miss out on some form of daily meditative practice, I have a worse day. I am less able to make wise decisions and I miss spotting serendipities.
Time Tip #2 : make sure you take at least 10 minutes of ‘me time’ each day, even if it’s going for a walk in the park. Guard this time with passion and note it’s reckoned that meditation extends our longevity by reducing stress and fostering good health. This will give us more time!
3. Being In Two Minds
It’s an urban myth our left brain is logical and our right brain is creative. A closer analogy, for most people, is that our left brain sits inside space and time and our right brain sits everywhere and ‘everywhen’ else. Both experience the flow of time in different ways.
Something magical happens when we get both sides of our brain working on the same thing at the same time. Time takes on an ethereal quality and stretches out. Good examples of whole brain tasks are doodling and mind mapping. When we enter this Whole Brain mode, we also seem to emit an Intention Field which prevents interruptions coming our way.
Time Tip #3 : before embarking on any creative task, hold your left nostril closed with your index finger and breathe through the right nostril five times. Then close the right nostril and breathe through the left five times. Repeat as necessary.
4. Create a To Love List
The To Do List can become a weight around our necks, dragging us down and backwards. They can contain a mix of things we want to do and things we feel we ought to do. They may also contain tasks we do out of habit.
Time Tip #4 : go through your To Do List and make two columns on a separate bit of paper. Label the first column as a To Love List and transfer over all the things on your To Do List that you love to do, in the order of those you would like to do first.
In the second column, labelled To Don’t List, add all the other tasks. Next what you do is go through all the tasks on the To Don’t List and either delegate them or delete them. Optionally, you can also think about what would have to change so you could love doing them instead and then move them over into the first column.
When we combine these four tips together, our days begin to take on a magical quality. As they are all free to do and simple to try, what do you have to lose but even more time if you don’t give them a test drive?
by Tom Evans | Apr 11, 2013 | Timing
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 …
- Switching away from the current task
- Being diverted away from the current task
- Fretting over the past
- Worrying about the future
- 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 !!!!
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.
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
by Tom Evans | Mar 16, 2013 | Timing
Bending Time is a time management programme like no other.
It introduces simple mind-fullness techniques that fundamentally change your relationship with time.
By changing the speed of our consciousness, we alter the perceived passage of time. Simply, we get more done in less time when we learn how to get and stay in the zone.
The techniques you will learn also have some collateral benefits such as improving your vibrancy, complexion and attractive-ness.
When you learn to Bend Time, life becomes easier, your serendipity increases and you stop pushing water uphill.
Listen to this interview with Kingsley Offor from Infusionsoft to hear how his life changed immediately after using the programme …
… and how he’s learned, “Not to sweat the small stuff.”
by Tom Evans | Oct 31, 2012 | Timing
We are blessed with two minds …
One sits inside space and time, the other everywhere and ‘everywhen’ else.
Listen to this purposely short podcast to find out what happens when we get them working together.
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.
You will also find out that we have different time clocks running all over our bodies!
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.
This course on bendy time is based on bendy pricing – you only pay what you can afford
by Tom Evans | Aug 22, 2012 | Timing
If you are one of those people who has a To Do List which never gets done, the best way to deal with it is to start a “To Don’t” List.
Listen to this Sixty Second Time Tip to find out more …
… and when you are done, make that list and start Bending Time – it comes with a full 30 day refund guarantee so you have nothing to lose but spending a little time to create loads more!!
by Tom Evans | Jul 2, 2012 | Timing
We give Old Father Time a bit of a hard time. We blame him constantly.
“There are not enough hours in the day.”
“Where did the time go?”
“I would write that book if only I had the time.”
“Time just gets away from me.”
This really unfair on him. He gives us continuity. He allows us to have memories of the past and to dream about the future. He stops everything from happening all at once, which would be ever so confusing for us.
It is humankind, not him, who have enslaved themselves to time. If you wear a watch, you are entrapping yourself ‘in time’. Watch that clock and again, you bond yourself to time. Even our calendar imprisons us in unnatural time. Months of varying lengths are a man-made construct. September, October, November and December should, by rights, be the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months of the year. We have the egos of Julius (July) and Augustus (August) Caesar to thank for that anomaly.
Incidentally, we have a perfectly good clock which orbits the Earth 13 times very year with the cosmic precision. When you live your life by 13 Moon Time, I can testify personally you stop pushing water uphill.
Time is not external and imposed upon us. It is generated by our consciousness. If we want to change our interaction with it, all we have to do is change how and what we think. For example, if you fret over past events or worry about the future, you have taken your focus away from what you are working on right now. You will ‘lose’ and waste time.
Old Father Time has become a bit of a punch bag who never complains. He just keeps marching along silently, probably smiling at our naivety at the way we have allowed ourselves to be entrapped by time.
Just imagine though if we could expand time such that we could get everything we wanted done and more. We would have no excuses and nobody to blame. All of a sudden we would be completely accountable for our actions and deeds. This would have massive implications. Time wasters would have nowhere to hide and those that are productive would get even more done.
In just 35 short years, Mozart composed over 600 works, many praised as masterpieces. Bearing in mind he started around the age of 5, that’s 30 or so compositions a year. Now he had no Internet, TV or computer games to consume his time, but that is pretty amazing output by any standards.
It’s said, if you want something done, give it to a busy person. Why this works is that busy people, like Mozart are not frittering time away on other things, they are focussed on getting things done.
For many people, having an external clock superimposed upon them is the most brilliant excuse. The reality is this however. We can all choose to to run our consciousness at a different rate and to get more done in less time. When we do this in a team or group, time dilation effects multiply.
If you sit in your left brain, with your ‘inner devil’ focussed on detail, you get nothing done. When you live a right brained existence with your head in the clouds, nothing gets done either. However, when both brain hemispheres work in harmony, our efficiency increases by 400% or so.
What’s even more amazing about achieving such efficiency gains is that the techniques required are largely free. They involve breathing and learning to get in the zone by entering the meditative state with our eyes open. These techniques also have health benefits by reducing stress and even lowering blood pressure. It’s thought that every minute spent in the meditative state adds at least a minute to our life spans.
So just imagine what you might do and what you might achieve if you no longer had the excuse that there was not enough time. There’s no time like the present to find out.
Living Timefully is a revolutionary time management programme that shows you how to change your experience of time by changing the way you think.
Start Living Timefully today
