“There isn’t enough time.” “If only there were 30 hours in a day, then … then, I’d get it all done.” “I wish I had more time.”
Have you ever said these statements before? We hear this from our clients all the time. And I just said it yesterday to my child, which caused a major, major meltdown after a great afternoon together. Kids push hard against the illusion that time is scarce.
Yet, time scarcity is the single most destructive force of our times. Most human caused disasters are time related: think Deepwater Horizon. That was all about running out of time, burning capital too fast. “Let’s save time” and ignore that chunks of rubber, that safety stopper that failed, are coming up the drill.
If time is money, there will never be enough, ever. Because that is way we’ve framed the game. There’s never enough time, and have you ever heard anyone say they have enough money? Probably not. Perhaps too, because we are so afraid, so disconnected from our limitations – the fact that we die, the fact that natural resources run out, that relationships end, that we need to eat and sleep to be healthy – that we are anxiously watching the clock.
Try this out: Stop watching the clock. Just as an experiment. I did this when my baby was born. Deeply worried about sleep deprivation I knew that if I counted the hours I was sleeping – and awake in the middle of the night – that was more likely to become anxious, and more likely to get less sleep. I also noticed, that the number of hours I counted could determine how I felt – how tired or awake. And this worked. Though tired, I could declare what I got as enough. And sure enough, per the laws of nature, time passed and the baby sleeps through the night.
Since time is the #1 Scarcity Drama, we will be investigating what it would be like to actually live in Sufficient Time, where we experienced time as enough. Stay tuned for an inquiry into Natural Time next week.