My friend Tim, who has a wholly different take on Time. We think he may have dropped an ‘e’

I’m reminded, as I tickle life into my new project - 3Desk - that things always take way more time than I anticipate.

I presume it’s the entrepreneurs curse (and blessing) that they continue to remain over-optimistic about how long things will take and what can be achieved in a given amount of time. The blessing is that if we knew the truth, we often wouldn’t start. Fortunately that’s not true in the case of 3Desk… the reality is slower than the anticipated, but it’s still proving very interesting.

Nonetheless, things take time. Lots of time.

I came across a nice article this week about time - by the founder of SongKick. He claims that startups ‘lose’ years in their attempt to be the newest shiniest big thing. A gentle reminder to people that start dates are often under-estimated. Overnight successes are often over-decade successes when you probe a little more closely.

Another article suggests that your formative years are your twenties -  so I’m now a bit late. Although, perhaps I’m a late-developer like Dave McClure, an indefatigable evangelist of all things web, who claims that his Damascene moment came later in life. Heartening.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m surprised at how often ‘time’ forms a component of my writing and thoughts. I seem, it would seem, to battle with time – from an attention ‘in-the-moment’ point of view, as well as recognizing what I might have been.

I’m aware that if I was to loosen the noose of time, or as Steve Jobs explained, to ‘live every day like it was my last, because one day it will be true’, then I might actually conquer some of the things that time is currently throwing in my way. There is a delicious irony in the idea that if you are too aware of time and achievement, you get less done. We should Let Go.

Someone asked me yesterday what I took time for and the only thing I could think of was sleep. Bad Simpletom.

So, how to remedy this issue? My own solution is embryonic and undisciplined, but here’s what I’m working on…

1) Taking 5 minutes each morning, whilst my coffee brews on the hob, to meditate. Should do more, but I’m going gentle on myself.

2) Integrate breathing and attention as often as possible into my day. Just 10 breaths, as often as I remember and trying to use mnemonics, like going to the loo, eating, stepping outside in order to remind.

3) Being more deliberate about time ‘off’. Even if just a few minutes walking to the shops, or having a drink with someone. Trying to banish ‘work’ or ‘stress’ from that moment.

4) Reducing obsessive email checking. I’ve been using RescueTime and have noticed that every week, without fail, email is my number 1. I’m trying to bash it to number 2+.

5) Not having too many things I’m working on at any given time.

Now for a bit more time to blog a bit more often. This has felt good, productive even in the telling and explaining. That’s why we do it, us mad bloggers, or naturists… as, it has been claimed that “Writing is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public” - Paulo Coelho

Plus, it would seem, from the number of links to other posts on this blog, none of this is new.

Spontaneity is dead.

I’ve only been back from Kenya for a couple of weeks and already my diary is chock-a-block full for every evening and weekend for the next couple of months.

How did this happen? I’m sure this isn’t part of the simplicity process?

Certainly it is nice to feel so ‘wanted’ by others to have plans-a-plenty, but without room for spontaneity, life becomes rather fixed. Certainly time passes much more quickly when one is always rushing from one ‘do’ to another. Is that a good thing?

Yesterday someone who I don’t know very well but would love to know better texted me and asked me for a drink. We gave up trying to find a suitable spot when we got two months away without an opening. They probably think I’m avoiding them – the opposite of the sentiment I was hoping to portray.

One of the reasons that I find London difficult is the sensation that this phenomenon is true for everyone. Each event or meeting is filled with people who are only there for a pre-planned period. People are continually aware of where they are going to be and when, meaning there is little fluidity. The distance needed to get around town also means that plans have to be made early.

It’s a sad state of affairs to live in a pre-ordained world of peripateticism and, I am convinced, it leads to the discontentment that drives much of our consumerist, self-centred behaviour.

I’d like to reclaim my valuable time and leave room for spontaneity and even, God forbid, boredom. Not that I actually want to be bored but much of this planning is about avoiding boredom, rather than enabling fulfilment.

A few simple diary rules for the Simpletom:

1)    Leave one or better still two nights a week plan-less, but book them into your diary as ‘free’ so you aren’t tempted to fill them.

2)    Book out times in the day in your diary to complete important tasks, or go for a walk

3)    Say ‘maybe’ to all events if you can without upsetting people, leaving you the opportunity to cancel if necessary.

4)    Over-estimate how much time things will take rather than under-estimate – leaving you with space rather than forcing you to rush around.

5)    Don’t put event after event back to back – try leaving some spaces, enabling a walk in the park between meetings.

6)    Learn to say ‘no’ to time-sucking friends or events that don’t contribute positively. You know who / what they are!

7)    Be brave enough to move people or events if necessary.

Now all that is left is to use these, rather than suffer the abuse of your own poor diarising.

Ladies and Gentlemen, can I have your attention?

I said ATTENTION

Google makes billions of dollars by grabbing tiny pieces of it from the periphery of your web experience. Other marketers make their living by capturing it through billboards, magazines, newspapers, the television and prevalent logos.

I’m asking you for yours for a moment now, politely.

See how long you can remain focused. Can you read through this article without getting distracted? Your own brain is often unable to give attention, even when it wants to. Meditators seek it for longer than the few seconds we can normally last without drifting off.

Attention is perhaps one of the most sought-after commodities today, as well as one of the most valuable things you possess. In any moment, individuals can fix their attention on many thoughts, objects or people. That attention might be deliberate, or, as is so often the case, we might not be able to control the wandering thoughts of our monkey mind.

It is uncanny how receptive society is to messaging – or put another way, how unable we are to avoid having our attention grabbed. Presidential elections are usually won by those who spend the most money on marketing. Film quality is often less important than marketing spend, in terms of box office success.
Are we really such basic creatures that we cannot stay true to our beliefs when barraged with messaging? Why, just because we hear more of something, are we more likely to believe it? Are we really so simple?

Unfortunately so.

In his book Affluenza, Oliver James examines the phenomena that those countries whose inhabitants have a higher rate of television viewing are more likely to suffer emotional distress because they become less happy with their lives.

I want to make two principal points about attention, for your attention:

One

The first is how often and how much of our attention is grabbed, rudely, by others. Think about the way you use your phone or computer. How often do you switch among applications, programs and messages?

How can you wrest your attention back so you remain in control?

With the power of focus, we can move the mind across countless kaleidoscopes and choose the things we do and don’t pay attention to. We can be in control, but also out of control.

My own methods include switching off my phone, removing all notifications, not reading newspapers or magazines, not having the Internet on my mobile device, leaving myself invisible on skype, refusing all newsletters, and turning off the Internet while I’m writing.

None leave me feeling disconnected – each helps me stay attuned to the moment. Figure out where to focus your attention and what to ignore.

Two

The second is the power of focused attention. If you can harness your attention, it is surprising how much more can be extracted from the same experiences.

Too often I find myself unable to enjoy the moment I am experiencing because of my wandering mind, or inability to give 100% of myself to that moment. When I do, life is usually richer, brighter and more powerful.

My midyear resolution is to try to focus on the book I’m reading when I’m reading it, writing to you when I’m writing, walking when I’m walking. By training my mind to enhance my ability to focus that attention on the moment, rather than remaining lost in thoughts, I’m convinced that my life will be fuller and freer.

Free

I’ll share my experiments in due course. Do share any tips you have in the meantime for staying focused. Zen Habits has a good section on focus.

Just remember that a second, minute or hour that passes can never be regained – so choose the focus of your attention wisely.

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Time plays more of a part in my life than I thought it did. Perhaps, if I pause for a moment, plays more of a part than anything else. In time, I hope to get better at it, although that hope directly undermines the point of this blog, which is to reduce dreams and increase the now.

This could get confusing, so I will try to switch off my ‘pun-echanism’ and not talk about time for a moment. Or a non-moment.

The theme of this post is one that is woven through many of my other verbal ramblings – time – but it was with some surprise when I went over previous posts that I realised I’d never attacked it head on. Like a capoiera fighter turned bad, I’ve been dancing and prancing around the problem for a long while, but now it’s time for a cheeky, full-contact uppercut, then a knee straight to the groin of the problem.

That’s twice in the last few weeks that I’ve metaphorically attacked the groinal area. Time for some Freudian head-work, methinks.

Enough of the dance, so here we go:

When sitting in a therapist’s chair in my early twenties, one of the principal observations was that I frequently anticipated thoughts and questions and answers. My bearded Freud-lookalike therapist told me that I always had a quick answer – it was as if, he claimed, I was trying to pull the questions or thoughts out of him rather than wait to hear what he had to say.

I’ve always been a quick study, but is it possible to be guilty of trying to determine what someone is saying before they’ve said it? Perhaps, but it makes relationships, and allowing the enjoyment of the unexpected, much more difficult. If you think you know the answer, you can distort your ability to listen, or be objective. If I were to delve deeper, I might learn that it is all about Ego. But that is for another post.

My therapist wasn’t that good, (or perhaps too good, but I guess with therapists you never know and after all this was about ego) so I mostly ignored his advice.

Later, when sitting for a vipassana, I noticed that I was constantly clock-watching. Every five minutes, I’d turn round to spy the clock and see how much time had passed, which became irritating because, normally, remarkably little had.

Given how much time I had on my hands during vipassana, I noticed that a huge amount of my life had been spent going over the past, or predicting or dreaming about the future.

I realised that, like a boat sailing through the ocean, the past was my wake. There was little I could do to further calm or disrupt the waters. Therapy is perhaps one way of learning from your past, but there wasn’t anything I could do to change it. Your past is a bit like a tattoo – indelible. Only your acceptance can change.

In turn the future was, stretching the poor sailing metaphor, unpredictable. Although it was possible to steer direction, or anticipate what you can see or receive on your radio, the only thing you can do is act in the present. You can’t reach out in front of the boat and calm waters, or whisk up a breeze.

You can only act now, even if the future is obvious. Even the water that can be seen a hundred metres in front of the boat can only be acted on when you are on it. In addition, you often prepare for things that never happen the way you expected they would.

Said again, I learned that the only way you can have an impact on the future is through the present. You can plan and scheme and dream, but it is only through your actions in this moment that you can make a difference. For all my dreams of doing and being things that weren’t happening then, many remain unfulfilled. In addition, the focus on the future prevented me from making the changes in the moment.

We are trained to believe that with education, hard work, diligence and careful planning, then we’ll have a better future. We’re trained to think about our future constantly. But we never know when a mad despot, probably CIA-trained, will receive a wheelbarrow full of weapons-grade ‘something-ium’ and blow us away.

I’m not suggesting we carpe diem without regard for our future (does this translate as ‘the day of the carp’ – a day in the life of an enlarged goldfish with a 3-second memory? That would be living in the moment). Instead we should spend about 10% on our past and 13% on our future, leaving the lucky-number filled 77% for the present. Because, usually, I spend about 30% in my past and about 69% wallowing in thoughts about my future, leaving an unlucky 1% for the here and now. Ekhart Tolle would be turning in his cardigan.

The more that I try to hold back on anticipating the future, the more rewarding the future is when it rolls around. The less I try to work out what I will feel and where I’ll be in a month or a year from now, the more energy I have to enjoy this moment. The ‘Power of Now’, Ekhart would have us claim. If all you can affect is now, rolling forward, it is harder to get caught up in the planning and easier to revel in the enjoyment.

The more I realise that the only place I can DO anything is in the present, the more I value it. Take that, evil diary – for NOW.