TIME...What Kind of Time Do You Have?

bylindasea

2.5K followers

11 years ago

When you think of the time you have, do you sometimes feel like you don't have enough time? How do you define time?

As we engage with the classrooms and information in our WA learning curve, being able to manage our time is critical to growing our business. So what kind of time do you have? There are only two kinds:

• Clock Time
• Real Time

We all have clock time. Its that 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year ... time. We all have it! But you know we don't experience time in clock time....

We experience time in "Real Time". That's the time you are standing in line at the Motor Vehicle department and its only been a half hour but it feels like 6 hours. That's the time you are looking at your 6 year old, realizing she will be in the first grade soon and wondering where the time has gone; those six years feel like they have gone by in 6 hours. So, when you think about it, time is totally relative, relative to what is happening in your life and how you are responding to it. Its REAL and it's relative, relative to whether it feels like its dragging by or flying by.

How will your time feel to you here in your Wealthy Affiliate community? Will you feel that your time is being well invested? While you are working through your lessons will time fly by or drag on? While you do the lesson's tasks, tasks that begin the creation of your site, will that time feel like its just an exhalation and oh my goodness, its 1 or 2 or 3 am in the morning. Where did that time go? Think on this a bit. time is relative and it describes, even defines, the world in which we live.

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has 13 definitions for time. Here are two of them:

1. a. "the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues" or b. a continuum which lacks spatial dimensions and in which events succeed one another from past through present to future"
2. "the point or period when something occurs"

So here is the fact of the matter when it comes to managing time. If you are using what I think of as 'old-school' tools such as an electronic or paper based planner to organize, prioritize, and schedule your day but still feel like you aren't getting everything done... there's a reason for that. The reason? Well, these tools are working with "clock time" and you are living and working in "real time". If a planner didn't work well for you, then lets be clear, that planner was a 'waste of time', right?

So what's a person to do? Does it feel a bit like a conundrum, like time is going to just slip away and well, there you are again having lost time to do what you want to do, with your kids, with your wife, with your business, with your life.

Let's approach it this way. Keep in mind that since time is where all of life is happening, "the point or period when something occurs", then we don't want to create a 'self-fulfilling prophecy' about not having enough time. Remember time is relative. We all have the same time, 24 hours in our day. What we have to get our heads around is how we are experiencing events during our 24 hours. Is time dragging on or evaporating gives us the clue on managing and investing our time to maximize it. If we don't want to feel that time is 'slipping away', then we need to put on our thinking caps and get above the feelings.

Here's what I mean. Since we live in "real time", then how we manage our time is to recognize that we spend our time in three ways; in thought, in conversation, and in action.

This video will give you a better handle on what I mean.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/video/232892 (Its something I picked up from the journal, Entrepreneur, and their website Entrepreneur.com)

So...Its a brain engagement, an exercise if you will, in not making longer and longer 'to do lists', but getting that we work better perhaps in the early morning hours, or if you are a 'night owl' maybe in those late night hours. Its understanding how we use our time to get the most benefit from it. We spend our time on thoughts, conversations and actions and mastering these maximizes our use of time!

Let’s face it, life is full of interruptions.

Then there are those responsibilities we have embraced too, that will tug on our heart strings and pull us in a host of different directions, major 'interruptions' of another kind.

Think of this….We cannot eliminate the interruptions but we can decide and say

• how much time we will spend on our interruptions
  
• how much time we will spend on the
  • thoughts
  • conversations and
  • actions

As we develop our online presence, and a business grows from our efforts, we have become an ‘entrepreneur’. What in the world is that, you ask? It is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise”.

That would be us!

So onward and upward Wealthy Affiliates.

Lets keep our ‘entrepreneurial’ actions alive!

I hope the above 10 Tips will be helpful as you manage your time. We will talk again soon!