Let's do the time warp, again...

Time! When you think of all the sayings about time, it really does feel like a scarce commodity.

Time is getting away from me.

There's just not enough time.

I don't have time.

In the interest of saving time.

It's like this mysterious, fleeting thing, slipping away from us and evading us when we need it the most. Who ever feels like they have enough time?

The realisation I have (very slowly) drawn over the last few months is that time is ultimately created, and controlled, by me. Yes, I accept that there are 24 hours in each day (and thanks to all the meme creators who helpfully remind me that I have 'the same amount of hours in the day as Beyonce'), but really, beyond that, time is spent on what I choose. It's not a mystery. It doesn't 'get away' from me. It doesn't escape me. Whenever I feel as though there's not enough time, what is invariably happening is that I'm not spending time doing the things I love, or doing the things that will enrich my life in some way.

Gay Hendricks explores this in his excellent (but yes, a little wacky) book 'The Big Leap'. According to Hendricks what we should be doing is,  instead of viewing time in the Newtonian manner, viewing it in an "Einstein" or genius manner. The central tenant of Einstein time is that is we control our time and in doing so, control the things we spend our time doing and ultimately achieving. According to Hendricks, “You’re where time comes from.”

It's all very confronting, and at the same time, very empowering. To view time as something that is created, and controlled, within us, rather than this elusive and all-too-scarce resource. I had a moment considering this last week when undertaking some time management training, which reinforced this idea and used Eisenhower's urgent / important matrix to show where we should be allocating our time.  It gave me pause to consider how much time I really spend:

• procrastinating (social media? Hilarious internet cats? I'm looking at you)
• worrying (did I turn the iron off? Am I going to be late? I have to get there!)
• frantically rushing to other people's deadlines and timelines (just because people tell you it's urgent, doesn't necessarily mean that it's true)
• doing things that simply don't matter (endless loads of washing, stacking the dishwasher, re-sorting my socks)

The really interesting thing about this is that, even with all this time 'wasted', I am still pretty efficient and super productive. So, if I spent less time doing these sort of things, what could I be achieving with those additional hours in the day?

With all this in mind, I've decided to take back control of my time, and to that end (and as part of time management training that I am doing through work) downloaded the app Hours Keeper, which I'll be using from tomorrow. Guess it's time to find out exactly how much of my life is dedicated to buzzfeed quizzes....