An aspect of our current era is the widening experience of being time-starved. We have more technology, tools, and access to media to supposedly help us, but a common experience is that we are not just “busy,” a common comment from our yesterdays, but we now feel that we don’t have any time at all. The tools haven’t saved time – they’ve taken it. We don’t have time to keep up with what we have committed to, much less to consider new possibilities, think strategically, or even just rest.
In this “time desert,” we hope someday to finally have time to do more than just run to catch up: to spend more time with the family; to have interests that we can pursue; to have time to think strategically and to learn. But, we don’t. Our schedules are full and there’s no time to even think about it. Time to run to the next appointment, to react to the next deadline.
To make matters worse we face an avalanche of offers, information, unbidden emails, interesting topics, and declarations of crises that you are told will meltdown without you. It’s exhausting just to unsubscribe from all the unwanted emails. To enter an interesting distraction can be a guilty pleasure, a moment of stress release, and another realization that you’ve blown your limited time.
How do we step out of this hamster wheel of life and actually have a meaningful life journey and productive work path? It’s a worthy question for most of us in our current era.
Jane, for example, found herself in the no-time warp and took a look at what had hijacked her time. As a strategic thinker, she found that a lot of her time was in administrative tasks. Lucky that she could see the drain since it opened up new choices. After getting a virtual assistant she’s back in a workflow with more relief and satisfaction. She created a Time Oasis in her time desert.
I invite you to a conversation about creating Time Oases in your life and work. I’m going to explore how we wind up finding ourselves time parched and what we can do about it. Like Jane, one move might be to delegate or get help. But there are many more. And our moves with time are not just about time – they are about action, results, value, satisfaction, and meaning. More to come…