The Scarcity Of Time Myth & The Fabulous CJ Hayden
I was reading CJ’s blog today and found her wonderful post about increasing awareness of all the time we really have in our lives. I commented, and as its relevant to all of you, am repeating, here:
…I was buying into what I now believe is the myth of "not enough time". That is one of the Scarcity Myths that most bedevil our culture. I think, as you point out with Zig Ziglar’s quote, that what we do with our time is strongly linked to our perception OF time, ruled by choice. Sometimes it’s difficult to remember that time is merely an illusion we have all agreed to participate in to order our world, and is subject to our shaping.
One of the challenges that I have taken up recently is to work progressively less, by one hour a day, and incrementing that each week, until stress relief is achieved. I now "work" four days a week, for eight and sometimes ten hours, by preference, with liberal lunches and breaks.
On only three of those four days, do I teach or see clients. I found I work much better using Day Four as an admin, marketing and product creation etc. day, where I can turn my extended focus on those activities exclusively. While I may do those things as-needed on the other days I work, I focus on them on Day Four, and have increased my productivity manyfold. As a consequence, I have much more leisure in my life, a three day weekend, and much MORE time for my family and other projects that interest me.
If anyone had told me this was possible at the outset of my coaching career, I would have said "Yeah, sure!" and walked away shaking my head thinking they were trying to scam me! We truly do have to be *ready* for certain wisdom to sink in.
There are many things we can do to sculpt our lives into more heroic curves and folds. One of those things I believe is to first and foremostly be heroes in our own lives, by putting ourselves first, saying "no" more often and attending to our own energy needs as a prime directive. Not in a "bad selfish" way either - but in the most self-nurturing way possible…so we can be there in even more quality for others. Thank you CJ as always, for being such a wonderful exemplar!
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