Where does time go?

Hello there,

I’m just back from a trip to the West Coast (Palm Springs), which provided some much-needed sunny contrast to the snowy East Coast.

While there, I was able to enjoy more time reading and resting. One of the books I started was called I’ve Got Time—a book on time management written by a Zen monk, Paul Loomans. In the book he describes principles for time management that allow us to “relax” into time, rather than attempting to control it, while still getting done what we care about. He calls this trusting approach to time management “time surfing,” and it fits well with my own perspective on how we can move through our days while acknowledging the fluid nature of everything. (If that sounds interesting, the whole book is a quick and thought-provoking read.)

Of the many ideas shared within the book, one has stuck with me in particular:

Practicing mindful transitions: Before starting a new task, take a moment to consciously acknowledge what you're about to do.

The idea here is simple: acknowledge tasks so you do everything you do with conscious intention and commitment. If you’re transitioning to a work task, commit to doing that. If you’re about to make some food, commit to doing that. If you’re transitioning to scroll social media for the next 15 minutes, commit to doing that. If you have to take the trash out next, commit to doing that. And so on.

The simple elegance of this practice is that it does a number of things at once. Firstly, it encourages you to avoid mindlessly moving between tasks—big and small. Instead, this practice asks you to become conscious of where you’re investing your next chunk of time (and life!). Secondly, it implicitly asks you to check your depth of commitment to that focus. The result is either that you’re more clearly focused on what you’re doing, or you notice a lack of commitment and can adjust accordingly.

Both of these are, I would argue, at minimum very useful outcomes, and perhaps even subtly life-changing.

Thus, I’ve been experimenting with mindful transitions. When in a transitional moment of my day, I’ve been acknowledging what I am about to do next. Already, I’ve found myself on a number of occasions not having a clear answer to this question. It’s amazing how quickly I find myself wanting to pull out my phone. The result: the phone has stayed in my pocket, and I’ve chosen something that feels meaningful instead.

I’ve been far from perfect, but the direct benefits I’ve already experienced mean it’s quickly gaining a firm place in my routines.

So perhaps after you finish reading this newsletter, you might experiment with one mindful transition and ask yourself:

What am I about to do next? How committed am I to this?

See how it feels to take this short, intentional moment to acknowledge how you’ll spend your next chunk of time, no matter what that is. I hope you’ll find it as practical and useful as I have.

And don’t forget, fun, pleasure and joy are things we can make time for too 🤗

Cheers, Stephen

An invitation you might explore: conscious transitions

If you’d like to practice a new relationship with time, try asking yourself this question at transitional moments in the coming days:

What am I about to do next? Can I commit to this fully?

Support this intention by considering a few specific, predictable times when this practice might be particularly valuable or easy to remember.

You might even visualize yourself pausing to ask this question at specific moments of your day—for example, visualizing asking this when you arrive at work, get home, or any time you pull your phone out on public transportation.

Set a reminder in your calendar to check in on how this practice is going after a few days. When you review it, take the perspective that this is an experiment. If it failed, you learned something. If it succeeded, you learned something. There’s no real downside. Decide then if you’ll continue with the practice, and if so, whether you’ll make any adjustments as you continue.

If you already learned enough to know this practice isn’t for you, then that’s fine too. You ran an experiment and confirmed something you couldn’t have known beforehand. You can let it go without any judgment.

Going further

A core orientation in my work is that growth — whether new habits, behaviors or skills — doesn't respond well to force or pressure.

There's so much advice out there about how to "improve" ourselves and particularly how to "manage our time better." It's often overwhelming and can turn even well-intentioned ideas into miserable slogs. So my general approach to testing out any new practice is to view it as a playful, living experiment rather than some big, arduous project. Even if something resonates deeply, the real test is how it feels in practice and whether I can integrate it into my life.

If that resonates, you might enjoy reading this post on my website: → Why growth doesn't respond to pressure

Further words of wisdom

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore, is not an act, but a habit."

— Aristotle

"The fact that your time is limited — plus the reality that you can only ever be in one place at any instant — means that in every moment, you're opting not to take a thousand alternative paths through life."

— Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals