Oh My Time!

“I don’t have time”; “Can’t you see, I am doing something—don’t disturb”; “I don’t have time to breathe, leave aside eat and bathe”

Is there anyone who doesn’t feel, believe or has uttered the above sentences differently, on various occasions, and using a choice of words or manner? This includes me indeed.

After coming to this side of the table, i.e. “self-employed”, “freelance consultant”, and “visiting faculty”, in other words without a fixed monthly pay cheque, suddenly I realised that there is plenty of time. How is that possible that just because one moves from that side of the table to this, the concept of time all of a sudden takes a different dimension.

In my attempt to find an answer to this dilemma the following reflections surfaced (completely personal).

1)?????No time vs Spending time--- When someone utters the choice statements expressing a lack of time, spontaneously, ?a question surfaces “then who has”? Upon deliberation, the fact dawns that everyone living has only 24 hours. Nobody in the world has 24 hours and one second. The next fact that dawns is that the contexts for different people are different, for instance in my case, the change from employed by an organization to self-employed. In this world, I have time for reading, watching movies, cooking, baking (can’t afford to paint and sing) and everything that I would like to do, whereas in the previous avatar those were unthinkable. Whereas, “T” remained constant, i.e. 24 hours. Therefore, it appears that in my previous avatar I did not know how to spend time whereas in this I am aware of how to spend time rather than believe, “No time”.

2)?????Spending money and Spending time—In all my teaching/consulting opportunities we discuss the constraints at work and or in life and almost everyone agrees that two resources that are permanently in short supply are, Money (need not be for many) and Time. If the business did not have bottom or topline pressures no one would have run after achieving targets, and life would have been ‘bindaas”. If we compare the two resources, i.e. “M” and “T”, the good part is “T” will never increase or decrease, whereas “M” could increase or decrease, so it is not a constant but a variable. ?At the same time, “M” can be saved but “T” cannot be carried forward. We have to spend 24 hours and no choice for that. ?So why can’t we plan to “allocate time” as we do for money. For instance, as soon as we get our salary, we allocate funds to various buckets, like those EMIs if not paid on time the lenders will send their…. health insurance, children’s education etc. Likewise if we allocate time in our Equated Units then like we spend money, maybe we will be proficient in spending time. The challenge here is time is measured in seconds and is significantly uncertain.

3)?????Unit of Time—The lowest unit of time for common people as we all know is seconds (let’s not get into nano etc). How much time is a second? I experienced this on a recent flight which was airborne around 2 pm, way past my lunch-time . Since ?I had pre-booked chicken curry rice so I didn’t eat anything at the airport. The hostess served and commanded, “8 minutes Sir”. Then the wait started. Another fact dawned that 480 seconds is a huge time. It never seemed to end. Just to challenge my temptation, I told myself even if I faint from hunger, I will not open it before ten minutes... Now I am proud to give this example of recognising the value of time and also spending it appropriately to get the most out of time.

4)?????In-control vs Out of control— Through all these reflections and experiences, I realised that as a self-employed person earning money (to what extent) is partly under my control whereas spending it is completely under my control , till we face some emergencies in life. Contrarily and happily, I recognised that spending time is completely under my control and I have full 24 hours to spend. Therefore, it is true that irrespective of the context ?(employed by others or self-employed) 24 hours given to me is completely under my control. However, the contextual variables and people around me are not under my control. ?So, instead of getting frustrated on the belief that “I do not have time” why don’t we “spend our time”… the precious 24 hours or 86400 seconds given to me and be happy.

Spend time happily.