A Genius of Time

In a recent PBS series, Genius, Pro­fes­sor Stephen Hawk­ing¹ chal­lenged a group of vol­un­teers to think like the great­est genius­es in his­to­ry and solve some of human­i­ty’s most endur­ing ques­tions. The first episode pon­dered the ques­tion of whether time trav­el is pos­si­ble. What amazed me in this pro­gram the most was that time is not lin­ear. To a human­is­tic mind like mine, this con­cept was shock­ing, too alien for me to com­pre­hend imme­di­ate­ly, so I lis­tened intent­ly to Hawk­ing’s expla­na­tion, which was illus­trat­ed by an exper­i­ment con­duct­ed by non-scientists. 

I thought of time as a time line, a straight line that you have marked with a “0” which is now, the present moment. You can mark the future, as time will unfold straight for­ward 10 min­utes from now, a month or a year, and it can go back 5 years, 30 years, or a cen­tu­ry. I always thought it looks like this:

Hawk­ing explained that, in fact, time is not lin­ear because it has anoth­er dimen­sion which is attached to it per­ma­nent­ly like Super Glue. This oth­er dimen­sion is space. 

I will spare you the details of the exper­i­ment (yet I encour­age you to watch this fas­ci­nat­ing series on PBS), but I real­ize now that when­ev­er you talk, think or rem­i­nisce about some­thing from the past, TIME is not iso­lat­ed — it is always asso­ci­at­ed with the PLACE you were when some­thing hap­pened, where you did some­thing or your mem­o­ry of an event. It hap­pened on a spe­cif­ic street, city, home, restau­rant, any­where in the world, and that place is finite and can be named. Close your eyes and imag­ine the time you went on an exot­ic vaca­tion. You can name the time and place. Or try to rec­ol­lect your first kiss. Again, time and place. Sim­ply put, time can­not hap­pen with­out iden­ti­fy­ing a place. 

I have used this rev­e­la­tion as an intro­duc­tion for an even big­ger ques­tion — why is time always on our minds nowa­days?

I want to exam­ine why it is that, for many of us, we claim that we DO NOT HAVE TIME in almost every con­ver­sa­tion. I am hop­ing to give guid­ance on how to have time on your side and how to use it wise­ly. It seems we should be in charge of time, man­age it well, and have qual­i­ty vs. quan­ti­ties of it. Accept­ing that time and space are inter­con­nect­ed and can­not be sep­a­rat­ed, it is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to focus on a lack of time itself; instead we should enhance the con­tent of the time we experience.

Let me illus­trate it with an exam­ple. When you go on vaca­tion, you vis­it charm­ing new places, you meet love­ly peo­ple, have fresh expe­ri­ences, tastes, and emo­tions, all of which fill your days and cre­ate a sense of well-being and pro­vide won­der­ful mem­o­ries. It seems time stretch­es, that you have been at this exot­ic place with all these won­der­ful peo­ple and a day can feel like a week. Right?

Or when you are involved with a project at school or work or enjoy­ing your hob­by which you embrace with pas­sion and devo­tion. Time slows down and you loose your­self and for­get time and space because you are enjoy­ing and rel­ish­ing every moment.

When you are in love, how does it feel? Time does not count; you find time to be with your loved one, cre­ate a new real­i­ty for you both, and what counts are not min­utes but emo­tion­al­ly charged par­ti­cles that fill the air and your hearts with joy, ful­fill­ment and over­whelm­ing love. 

With all of these sce­nar­ios, we have slowed down time. Yet, per­haps in the age of instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion where mes­sages can trav­el in nano-sec­onds and what could be pro­duc­tive ‘me’ time, we choose instead to spend it on try­ing to absorb too much infor­ma­tion ham­mer­ing us from TV, the world wide web, Face­book, Twit­ter and on and on. We car­ry mobile phones with us and can man­age our per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives with a touch of a fin­ger at any moment of every day. We call them smart phones, but what would be a smart thing to do is to turn them off and put them away, from time to time.

Say­ing that we have no time is a fal­la­cy and a self-cre­at­ed mind­set. We chose to divert our ener­gy and spend it on things that in the long run do not matter. 

One day, as I was obsessed with run­ning around, doing some errands, clean­ing the house, etc., a friend asked me, “Do you think that on your deathbed you will regret not hav­ing more time to do these things?”

I thought this ques­tion was a bit mor­bid but true. Cer­tain­ly, on our death bed we will not regret the fact that we did not watch more TV or spent more time clean­ing or more time at work writ­ing emails, but we might regret not doing more mean­ing­ful things, like help­ing and serv­ing oth­ers, vol­un­teer­ing, spend­ing time with loved ones, fam­i­ly and friends, see­ing the world, or teach­ing our fel­low human beings how to be kind, thought­ful and enjoy each moment to the fullest. In 2013 the Huff­in­g­ton Post pub­lished an arti­cle, “The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying,” based on a book of the same title by a pal­lia­tive nurse who record­ed the most com­mon regrets of ter­mi­nal patients: 

• I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life oth­ers expect­ed of me. 

• I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

• I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.

• I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

• I wish that I had let myself be happier.

These are very enlight­en­ing emo­tions, and should be strong moti­va­tions to real­ly embrace our lives ful­ly while we are liv­ing, not when our lives are wind­ing down. To achieve that and to tame time in your life, I offer some tips that can put you on track and keep time on your side.

One of the first things we have to change is stop believ­ing we have no time, but real­ize that we do have a lot of time on our hands. The 15 hours we stay awake dur­ing the day trans­lates to 900 min­utes and 54,000 sec­onds. When rest­ing we take 12–20 breaths a minute, so in a 15-hour day we have breathed in and out 18,000 times! This is an impres­sive num­ber and mul­ti­plied by weeks, months, years — you do have a lot of time. But it is finite.

With that in mind, it helps to be mind­ful to slow down. Try to be present in every­thing you do and not rush through moments. If you are in a hur­ry, being fran­tic and ner­vous will not change the dis­tance you need to get to your car, but will only make you more anx­ious. Have you ever rushed out the house, and looked for the keys, could­n’t find them, and in such a fren­zy, you lost an addi­tion­al 5–10 min­utes? But if you slowed down, took deep breaths, and thought calm­ly about when you saw those keys last, chances are you will find them right away. How about when you are walk­ing the dog and are on the phone at the same time? You don’t even notice where you are walk­ing nor do you see the sur­round­ings. Many of the things you do dai­ly are not tru­ly expe­ri­enced by you. As if on an autopi­lot. Instead of always rush­ing or being dis­tract­ed from every­thing around you, just walk, notice the trees, breathe the air, pay atten­tion to the details, rel­ish the moment. Now you are man­ag­ing your time with purpose. 

Struc­ture your time both at work and in your per­son­al life. When our time is not struc­tured, we often spend it on mean­ing­less stuff, doing things unnec­es­sary, with­out much care or focus. Struc­tur­ing your time—even your leisure time—has been proven to make you more moti­vat­ed, focused, and hap­pi­er because it gives you a direc­tion and a purpose.

It is total­ly coun­ter­in­tu­itive, but when you have an inten­tion behind your actions, you will feel much more cre­ative, effi­cient and hap­pi­er (even if that pur­pose is to do noth­ing for cou­ple of hours!).

Make a list of where you might be wast­ing your time. Keep a diary of your dai­ly activ­i­ties and ana­lyze where you are not pro­duc­tive and deter­mine if what you do match­es your pri­or­i­ties. For exam­ple, you want to spend time exer­cis­ing or have more time with your fam­i­ly, but instead you spend it surf­ing the web or watch­ing TV. Hav­ing a list will help you get rid of the things that are not serv­ing your goals and dreams. When you track your time dur­ing the day, how you fill your space is laid out in front of you, and it also helps you see what activ­i­ties increase or decrease your effectiveness. 

Less is more. Ask your­self if you are doing too much. Remove the activ­i­ties that are not ben­e­fi­cial to your goals; you can only do so many things with­in a day. It is so much bet­ter to select those activ­i­ties that are real­ly mean­ing­ful to you and focus on them. Spread them out over the day and skip super­fi­cial activ­i­ties. Less real­ly is more.

Think of what mat­ters the most to you. We all have dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties in life. For some it maybe their career while for oth­ers it is vol­un­teer­ing or build­ing a reward­ing fam­i­ly life.

Take a moment to think about what you real­ly, tru­ly care the most about and then devote as much of your time to that as pos­si­ble. It seems like sim­ple advice, yet few of us actu­al­ly do it. Most of us wing our way through each day not real­iz­ing that mind­ful­ly spend­ing our time could pro­duce much more mean­ing­ful results.

Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule? It is believed that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. So you have to find those high­ly effec­tive things that work the most in your life and remove the low ener­gy ones. For exam­ple, an aver­age adult spends 4 hours a day watch­ing TV. If you live to be 80 you would have spent 10 years watch­ing tele­vi­sion! Just imag­ine if you sub­sti­tut­ed the pas­sive watch­ing of TV for learn­ing a lan­guage, tak­ing up danc­ing, going back to school, vol­un­teer­ing, med­i­tat­ing or spend­ing more valu­able time with your loved ones. You would have had 10 more mean­ing­ful and pro­duc­tive years. Invest the time in high ener­gy activ­i­ties and they will bring you the best return of your life. You will achieve ful­fill­ment.

Think of time and space as one con­cept, full of con­tent that is dear to your heart and you too will become a Genius of Time.  Cre­ate your life to your delight. Each day have a lit­tle bit of time and space just for you; relax, med­i­tate, soak in a warm bath, read what fas­ci­nates you, take a mind­ful walk, have a heart-to-heart just with you and just for YOU. 

1. Stephen William Hawk­ing is a world-renowned Eng­lish the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, cos­mol­o­gist, author and Direc­tor of Research at the Cen­tre for The­o­ret­i­cal Cos­mol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge. He is uni­ver­sal­ly con­sid­ered a genius of quan­tum physics and black holes in space. He is also afflict­ed with amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis (ALS) which is called Lou Gehrig’s Dis­ease in the US.