Time (Management) Is Relative

In our corporeal world, our individual human experiences are circumscribed by time. We have our bodies — dust called to life by spirit — for a number of years. Because we can count our years — and the months, weeks, hours, moments that comprise them — time has become a resource to be managed.

Coaching is often geared toward helping people manage this precious resource. Time management and productivity are typical areas of focus for professional coaches. Effectiveness is the buzzword of the day. But effective toward what end? Productive for what purpose? We each need access to our inner wisdom to ensure our aim is true before we kick into action. The corporate highway is littered with corpses of burned-out visionaries who used more muscle than leverage in their pursuit of productivity.

Our world moves fast. “Fast” is a measure of distance and time. Time drives us. Time surrounds us. Tick tock. Can you feel it?

Yet time is flexible. Have you noticed when you’re engrossed in your favorite pastime that time just zips by? And when you’re dragged into something you dislike the second hand moves like molasses. Being a clinical hypnotherapist as well as a coach, I hear clients exclaim that forty minutes in hypnosis feels like five. Time is relative. Our beloved Einstein staked his theory on it.

My point is this: Time is not fixed, nor should be our relationships to it.

When I help someone with time management. I take one of two tracks, based on the dominance of the left or right brain in the client’s way of relating to the world. For the left-brainers, who possess a primarily analytic nature, I recommend working with a structured planning system like FranklinCovey’s or a semi-structured system like my own Can Do Kit. Conversely, I encourage clients with a right-brain, or creative/gestalt, tendency to begin by tuning into their bodies. Using an expanded awareness of the present moment, coupled with a basic calendar and some of my Can Do Kit’s tracking tools, allows the right-brainer to stay “in the flow.” To the left-brainer such an approach is just way too loosey goosey. And the structure of conventional linear systems seems too oppressive to their right-brain counterpart.

While the experience of time is not one-size-fits-all, clocks and calendars are still powerful tools for effectiveness in consensual reality. When we make clear agreements about time — and honor them — we create strong containers in which magic can happen! For those of you who fear time management is a constraint on your flow, I wager that the more connected you are with your body (which reads time more firmly than the mind), the more you will be able to sense the difference between 1pm and 1:02. Clarity is not rigidity — it is awareness.

Right-brainers, remember that your body’s clock and the Earth’s calendar are the most relevant reference points for managing your time resources. Left-brainers… invest in a Swiss watch. The accuracy of its mechanism will delight you!