It’s About Time
The concept of time kept surfacing in my life this past week – in an article I wrote for a client, in conversations with my kids, and in books I was reading. It feels as though it is begging to be written about. The fruit is ripe for the picking in my mind.
Why is it important to consider our relationship to time? How does this help us in our marketing or business strategy? You may have heard people say, “Time is your greatest asset.” The reality is that our time – in the form of our attention – is being stolen from us rapidly with the onset of social media, digital information and 24/7 streaming entertainment at our fingertips. The first step to stopping this thievery is to be aware that we are actually giving it away by turning a blind eye. If time is, in fact, our greatest asset, most of us are squandering it, neglecting it, and completely unaware of the impact this loss has on our lives.
It obviously impacts personal relationships and quality time with family and friends. Yet giving away our time by allowing our attention to be constantly stolen also causes us to lose profit, energy and impact in our businesses. This cuts directly into our purpose, our big why.
What are you here for?
How much time are you using for your big why?
How much time are you losing each day that you could reallocate for your purpose and make a much greater impact?
These questions are essential to assessing our time from a strategic vantage point. This might sound overwhelming, but it is as simple as tracking your time doing things that are not directly driving your why (on social media, for example), and then making a conscious decision to do something else with that time. A few practical ideas for changing this sort of habit might be:
Using the screentime app on your phone to limit time on certain apps
Setting alarms for specific times you plan on doing things important to your big why
Asking someone you can count on to be an accountability partner for you for 1 action per week that will drive your purpose forward
Make time blocks on your calendar for specific deep work, then honor them
When changing what may be a deeply ingrained habit, however, it is important to do some of the harder emotional shadow work to uncover hidden beliefs that might prevent you from being successful. They can show up in stealth-mode, and you may not even recognize them when they do – unless you’ve done the work first.
One such exercise was assigned to a group of us on a recent mastermind call. It came from The Shadow Playbook by Cindy Lou Golin. We were asked to write a letter to Time, to answer questions about our relationship with Time and tell it what we wanted from it. Personify it, if you will, and speak directly to it, this entity that often feels elusive, ethereal and ever-changing.
Here is my letter:
Dear Time,
I have a love / hate relationship with you. I love you when you stretch and bend, when you surprise me and put on an invisibility cloak. I hate you when you constrict me, put limits on what I can or cannot do and pull me from those I love. You are both everything and nothing. An illusion of our human creation that measures… what? Minutes? Accomplishments? Kisses? Days? Years? A Life?
What do I want from you? Peace. Flexibility. Patience. For you to disappear much of the time. Or to expand to include all that holds meaning and value for me, and contract around all that does not.
I do not pretend to think I could ever control you – or even understand you – fully. Yet I would like to think we could be friends. Help each other out. That you could drop me into wormholes of possibility more frequently. And I could set you free from all the clocks and devices to measure quality of life rather than quantity. Because ultimately the optimist in me believes we both desire and deserve that freedom.
I wish you well and hope to enjoy your company more often in the years to come.
In love and freedom,
Kristen
This letter-writing process revealed deep-seated beliefs I hold about time and how I see it as a player in my life. (Ironically, it was not time-consuming. It took me all of about 5 minutes.) What I want from time is important to note, because ultimately, I hold the keys to that change. It is a perspective shift that needs to happen for me. When I adopt the new perspective on time I discuss wanting in this letter, I feel freer, get more done in less time and work in a flow state on purpose much more of the time.
Another way to shift your perspective on time is to read or listen to skilled leaders discuss their relationship with time. In an excellent book I am listening to, 10x Is Easier than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More By Doing Less by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy, they discuss the importance of differentiating chronos time vs. kairos time. These are definitions of time used in the Bible and by the ancient Greeks. They completely transformed how I see time. Chronos time is symbolized by the clock, measuring time by quantity. Kairos time is about deep work, measuring time by quality. I am starting to shift my perspective using these terms by simply noticing when I feel like I am in a chronos mindset versus a kairos mindset.
Of course, there is a time and a place for both types of time. However, for deep work, the kind of meaningful, life-changing work that we feel most fulfilled doing, we must be willing and able to enter a kairos state of mind. This means living in that liminal space between the minutes, paying attention to signs or indicators that rapidly amp up our ability to act, move or implement something powerful.
Being in this flow state where time is about the quality we are experiencing and creating produces the highest level ideas, products and services. It taps into the divine muse and invites Her to connect pieces of our life or business we otherwise would have missed if we were busy looking at the clock. It requires flexibility, patience, openness, and receptivity. But entering the flow makes it all worth it. So why not dive into the depths of kairos and explore what could be?
What do you want from Time?
How would you like to change your relationship with Time?
How might this improve your life or your business?
