I was thinking about Time and how we think of it and use it. I guess most of us were brought up with the idea that it was linear and flows in one direction at a uniform speed very much like the hourglass that we used to use to measure it. Then clever people come along and tell us that it is relative to the position and speed of the observer. I’ll make no attempt to explain this as I don’t claim to understand it. All I gather is that even our brightest brains can’t really agree on its nature, but we may be able to reverse it and travel in it.

However, according to my entirely subjective experience it seems to move more like a river, and to move at different speeds at different times. Sometimes my time seems to be moving much slower than every one else’s around me especially when I get absorbed in something. There are periods when I can’t seem to stop and yet don’t seem to make a great deal of progress on a series of simple jobs that are waiting on a little gap to attend to them.

I have been on the Time Management courses, and am generally pretty disciplined about being ‘on time’, but my subjective experience of this ‘resource’ is very different from this rather pragmatic, western view of it as a business resource that we can trade and sell. If you think about plants and animals; they are just as subject to Time as we are, but they seem to do things when it is the ‘right time’. I have yet to see a robin with a tiny little watch or a buttercup with a clock! They just know that they are now ready to move forwards.

Despite our cleverness and our courses, I think we have much of this awareness within us and it then has to struggle against our wristwatch mentality as to which one controls when we move. When working with Change, I have no doubt that the natural clock is the one that controls us. So if it doesn’t feel like the right day to move forwards, chances are it isn’t! Try listening to yourself, and where possible arranging your diary round your inner sense of rhythm and time. I think you will find it is much less stressful!

“Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.” Napoleon Bonaparte

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” Albert Einstein