Four Fears, Talent & Time - #006 - Time

The 6 things that stop people writing

Part #006: Lack of Time

One really practical way to deal with perceived lack of time is to read one of the many excellent books on how to improve your time management. One I specifically recommend for authors is Time Management for Dummies by Clare (no relation) Evans.

Books like this are brilliant at pointing out where you can claw back time by better management your day. If you are time-poor though, you might not have time to read a book on time management though so chapter 2 of my book Blocks is a good summary which you can read in about 5 minutes.

I would however like to propose a more lateral and fundamental approach to time management – and that’s to change the perceived speed of time itself.

Now this might seem far fetched, or in the realms of Doctor Who or Back to the Future, but scientists are coming to the conclusion that our reality – our space and time – are linked to our consciousness. In fact, it’s more accurate to say that it’s our very consciousness that actually creates our reality. So all you need to do to change time is to make a change in your consciousness.

A fly and an elephant both perceive time differently to us … and I for one have noticed a difference in peoples’ cognitive reaction time.

I am sure you have heard about athletes who have been “in the zone” – a sort of timeless place – or perhaps you have had a light bulb moment where in less than a second, you get a flash of inspiration – a whole picture for a new idea. If you were able to MRI scan your brain at this moment, you would see both the right and left hemispheres light up in synchronism. For that split second you were Whole Brain (or even Whole Mind) Thinking. A brain scan would show that your brain was generating alpha and probably even theta waves.

Now you can access this state while meditating. When I mention this to authors, their first reaction is that they don’t have time to meditate. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but I can testify that 20-30 minutes meditation before a writing session will deliver not only the time back by a factor of 3 or 4 but also much better quality writing.

“But I can’t make my mind go quiet,” is normally the next protest swiftly followed by, “I’d like to meditate but I don’t have time to learn how.”

Well, if you hear yourself saying this, help is now at hand. You don’t need necessarily to enter an ashram for two months. Although, if you did, it might well be time well spent …

Have a listen to this audio track to learn a routine you can use anytime and anywhere – great also for getting back to sleep in the early hours – but not as one client of mind did for listening to while driving !!!

Meditation machines are also now available that help get you into both alpha and theta states. I have been using a for over a year now and even though I am reasonably adept at meditation, I can testify that they really do work.

You can get them in the UK from Meditations UK …

After a few weeks of use, you will even find it easier to enter the meditative state without a machine and while you are in what is normally thought of as the waking state.

For a writer, this become significant as time seems to stretch out so that in a single hour you write what would normally take a whole morning or afternoon.

The benefits to your productivity are therefore immense and you will be amazed at your output in all areas of your life. People who have used machines even get comments of how well they look.

Further reading …

I also recommend getting hold of a copy of Steven Taylor’s excellent book called Making Time – it explains in great detail on how this all works and how you can start to control time to your advantage.
Get it on Amazon here …

… you can see the first blog on Fear of Ridicule here here
… the second on Fear of Failure here
… the third on the Fear of the Unknown here
… the fourth on the Fear of Success here
… the fifth on the Lack of Talent here