RETHINKING TIME

YES, BUT I DON’T HAVE TIME

-What if self-care is how we spend time better?

We tend to say that time is our most important currency and I agree, we need to value time, but do we? When my dad was dying, time was both going very slowly and very fast. We were running out of time and yet every day we had the opportunity to slow down time by making it matter. It did something to my perception of time and my relationship with time changed. I started hating wasting time and I tried to optimize every moment. But not by becoming more of a human doing, by learning what it means to be more of a human being. 

HUMAN DOING OR HUMAN BEING?

We are trying to keep up with the speed of technology by working harder, but we cannot hack time by abandoning our self-care. Even though we work with computers, we have to remind ourselves that we are not like them and we are not supposed to be. Tech is there to support us in working better and our job is to support our whole human system all day long in working better too. Self-care is actually an investment in our work as it allows us to hit the sweet spot where we have clarity, energy, vibrancy, strength, resilience, empathy, patience, and an overall better mood.

Many people say they don’t have time for self-care, I say they don’t have time not to. When you make self-care proactive and the foundation for doing your best work, staying on top of tasks and interacting better with the people you work with, it creates more time—because it’s how we spend time better and it’s how we achieve our goals without burning out.

Without even realizing it, whenever work gets stressful, we put ourselves, our relationships, our health, and our work-life quality on hold—which isn’t at all our fault but rather our social construct.

RETHINKING BOUNDARIES: CHANGING WHAT “ON COMPANY TIME” MEANS

The lines between work and life have become blurred; we work all the time, even when we are not “at work” because tech means we are always available. 
But, because we think of resilience as biting down, shutting up and keeping going, it has worn us out. Now, we can finally start asking questions about what we need to change the way we work so we can navigate the reality we are in, instead of just waiting for things to "go back to normal" because let's face it—that didn't work either.

When I work with companies to create a more healthy work culture, I see the initiative to change the corporate meeting calendar to include pauses between meetings, which is a great recognition that we need micro-pauses to manage stress. But this will only work if we choose to spend that time prepping our whole human system for the next meeting instead of spending it answering emails. We do this by pausing to reconnect with what we each need to keep ourselves supported throughout the day. It’s not just a moment of time to get our documents in order or replying to messages

As much as we are seeing more flexibility around when and where we work, it’s still up to us to turn off, breathe, and reset. 

USE YOUR MIND, BETTER

In her book, Peak Mind, neuroscientist, Amishi P. Jha, PhD shares that studies have shown that 50% of the time our mind wanders off and doesn't stay engaged with what is going on right in front of us. As she says, “We are missing half of our lives.” Can you imagine the amazing possibility this is for activating a care-driven mindset? This is exactly why it’s so vital that we learn to use Power-Pausing to be inclusive of our human needs rather than continuing to ignore ourselves. We think that we are saving time, but we’re not. We need a self-care mindset instead to master our energy, attention, and focus.

No matter how quickly technological advancements are coming at us, work isn’t about keeping up with the speed of technology—as that’s a race we can’t possibly win. Today, we are in a care-driven economy—a relationship economy—where it’s the quality of our human relationships at work that matters most, which includes not only the ones we have with our clients and with each other, but also the relationship we have with ourselves.

Rethinking how we spend our time working is crucial to work-life quality because it's not how fast and hard we work that makes us great, it’s who we are that makes us great. 

BEING PRESENT

I have found that spending time better is about taking a pause to reconnect with my intention to reset my attention. Cutting through the noise and being able to prioritize how to use my attention to focus on what really matters is how I get more done. I also give my mind the space and myself the grace to reclaim power of choice. What am I going to work on now means choosing to let be for now, the other things that I need to do. As much as we believe we can multi-task, our attention cannot. 

The more present we can be with others is also how we share the gift of our attention. To work better together we need to be present. When our mind is somewhere else, we are basically not respecting the other person, or our own time. 

Of course the overwhelm is real, and cutting through it takes pause, a Power-Pause.