What is Time Management (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of 4 in a series of posts answering the question, "What is time management?"
In Part 1, we explored the relationship between time management and productivity.
We learned that time management is a skill that helps us juggle our various engagement and still achieve the results we want.
Some people juggle better than others, and those who do it better have effective time management skills.
Whether you know it or not, we're all producing results every moment of every day...
But those who produce desired results are those who use their time consciously.
This is the current understanding of effective time management, that those who get sh*t done are "using their time wisely."
But are they really using time to achieve all their goals?
When someone tells you how to "save" time, are you putting this thing called "time" in a savings account, or a piggy bank to eventually withdraw and use at some point in the future?
Or when you say, "this is a waste of time," is there anything actually being thrown away, as if it were left over food going into the trash bin instead of a tupperware for the next day?
"Saving" time and "wasting" time are familiar terms because it's part of our conditioning.
We've accepted this idea that time is something "out there," something real and concrete that we can use to achieve our goals.
But what's really going on here?
How do the most productive people in the world set and achieve several goals and still find time to incorporate other things like health and family?
The truth is, they have a completely different perception of time.
A time-tested illusion...
“Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.”
—Eckart Tolle
Have you ever wondered why time seems to slow down or speed up depending on what you’re doing?
Work on a passion project for a few hours and it feels like only minutes have passed.
Hold a challenging pose for a few minutes, or study for a class you're not interested in, and it seems like hours have gone by.
Or what about those times when you forget what day of the week it is...
What's the reason behind these phenomena?
Well, I'll just give it to you straight:
Time is an illusion—it's a construct of the mind, a figment of your imagination.
It's not any more real than the people on a movie screen at your local theatre.
These people talk to each other and move about on the screen but you cannot touch them or talk to them. You can't change them or influence them in any way.
Robert Lanza, an American doctor, scientist, and philosopher, makes it easy to understand:
“At each moment, we are at the edge of a paradox known as “The Arrow,” first described twenty-five hundred years ago by the philosopher Zeno of Elea.
Starting logically with the premise that nothing can be in two places at once, he reasoned that an arrow is only in one location during any given instant of its flight. But if it’s only in one place, it must momentarily be at rest.
The arrow, then, must be present somewhere, at some specific location, at every moment of its trajectory. In effect, motion is not what’s actually occurring but rather a series of separate events.
This may be the first indication that the forward motion of time—the movement of the arrow—is not a feature of the external world, but instead a projection of something within us as we tie together the things we are observing and experiencing.
By this reasoning, time is not an absolute reality but a feature of our minds.
David Hawkins, consciousness researcher and author, would further expands on the implications of The Arrow as he unwraps causality.
He describes time as a “mentation,” a projected illusion originating from an arbitrary, artificial point of observation.
“When observed closely, it will be realized that sequence itself, like heliotropism, is merely an intellectual construct. There is neither a sequence nor a happening but, instead, successive points of observation on an imaginary time scale.”
Hawkins debunks a myth we’re all so familiar with—that one thing leads to another—suggesting that we are actually all things at all times.
Instead of A > B > C, he says that model ABC is more accurate regarding our true relationship with time.
What exactly is time?
To add onto this reasoning, here are few more thoughts from world-renowned scientists you may have heard of...
“Before 1915, space and time were thought of as a fixed arena in which events took place, but which was not affected by what happened in it. Space and time are now dynamic quantities... space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe.”
What Hawking is alluding to is the adaptability of time based on our circumstance.
Our experience of it changes, seemingly going slower or faster depending on what we're doing. Sometimes, it even feels like time has stopped altogether.
If you sat down with Albert Einstein in person, and he told you that time was fake, would you call bullshit?
When a friend of his passed away, he remarked:
“Us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.”
Convincing, indeed.
Einstein came to the the truth of time through science and mathematics.
Lucky for you, it doesn't have to take countless hours at the chalkboard to have this same epiphany.
If you're still not convinced, just play pretend for a minute and let's explore where it all began.
Where did the concept of time come from?
The concept of time was first used as a tool to survive.
Primordial man measured the cosmos, tracking stars and seasons to map migration patterns. As migration slowed and groups settled, communities formed, and cultures started to develop.
For early civilizations, time became an essential component of rituals, celebrations, and even religion.
The people honored the skies with the utmost respect, looking towards the sun and the moon for divine guidance and direction. They erected magnificent structures like the Pyramids and Stonehenge with reverence for the cosmos.
At that point, they didn't use time to keep a schedule but instead used it to maintain a relationship with God and Mother Nature.
As man evolved so, too, did the perception and use of time.
The sundial and the hourglass were some of the earliest inventions to surface. Now we have mechanical clocks, digital clocks, solar clocks, and even kinetic clocks that power themselves using movement.
This quick 2-minute video offers a brief history to sum it all up:
“When we mechanized time, we also, and completely by accident, mechanized us. And when the clocks got smaller, time could follow us everywhere, a constant reminder of hours, minutes, seconds lost or won. Now we don’t eat when we’re hungry, we eat when it’s time to eat. We don’t sleep when we’re tired, we sleep when it’s time to sleep. We’ve built an amazing world that runs like clockwork, meaning that these days, so do we.”
Ironically, time used to be a solution. Today, however, it seems to be a root cause of our problems (aka “the struggle”).
We are continually fighting to keep up with the world around us. We speed to work, rush our meals, and rarely find the time to “stop and smell the roses.”
Why does it matter?
We live in a day and age where time is readily accepted as a concrete force of nature that we must adapt to, but that's far from the truth.
In fact, we can make time adapt to us.
We have the power to shape it the same way we shape sand to build castles. But first we need to understand the mechanics of how it all works, then use that knowledge to our advantage...
To escape the illusion, you don't have to watch the Matrix trilogy eight times, you have to deepen your understanding of the game.
You have to "wake up" and see what's really going on. Then (and only then) you actually stand a chance at winning.
Something we once controlled now controls us.
If you want to take control of your life, you must first understand the forces that are influencing it.
Knowing what time is (and where it came from) is a good place to start because, with this understanding, you're one step closer to realizing that time can't actually be managed at all...
Click here to read Part 3 of 4.
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