The deepest reality you are aware of is the one from which you draw your power.
—DEEPAK CHOPRA, M.D.
Is your internal motor running faster than the world around you? Do you get impatient waiting for water to boil? When the airline reservations line has you on hold, does the canned music grate on your nerves? What if your lunch date shows up half an hour late, and on the way back from lunch you find that the automatic teller machine is out of order and the bank clerk needs two approvals just to cash your check? Most people would gladly become less tense and rushed—if only they had the time!
In a hectic world in which change and frenzy seem to be the only constants, you may feel like a car racing out of control down a narrow mountain highway. How are you supposed to enjoy the ride or appreciate the scenery when you’re in constant danger of losing your grip and crashing over a cliff? What is all this tension and rushing for? For many, it’s to be able to afford a heart attack, divorce, and psychotherapy for their children.
Most of us take on more than it’s humanly possible to accomplish in any given day. Handling innumerable chores and crises at home, work, and in transit while also trying to pack in athletics, social activities, and fun, we hardly find time to come up for air. Sooner or later, as we try to cram more and more activities into less and less time, the body rebels. Human beings don’t “suddenly” develop anxiety attacks. By the time anxiety strikes, there have been years of neglected clues to slow down, reexamine priorities, and listen to your body’s signals.
You may have become so used to being under pressure, you don’t remember what it’s like to relax. Inactivity is what seems unpleasant or threatening to you. You try resisting, but your mind still races with things to do. You take a few moments of quiet with your family, and immediately an argument ensues. You take a day off from work and spend the entire time catching up on errands and chores. You have difficulty sleeping because you worry about your love life or work.
You may try to appear calm when you’re under the gun, but your body knows the difference. Feigning tranquillity doesn’t take the pressure off. Do you often find yourself thinking, “I don’t have time,” or “Time’s running out,” or referring to time lines and time pressures? Numerous opinion polls in the United States and Europe show that people complain more about lack of time than about lack of money or freedom. In recent years our collective sense of life’s quickening pace—the feeling that time is growing shorter, more scarce—has become exaggerated. We’re hurrying. We’re straining to catch up. We’re anxious about time. We’re resentful about time. We feel helpless about time. We’re time stressed.
The human body is not well suited to time struggle. Research strongly suggests that people who suffer from hurry sickness—the anxious feeling that there’s never enough time—may be at increased risk of developing health problems such as high blood pressure and heart disease. Impatient clock-watching is also linked to hostility, resentment, and sudden cardiac death (an unexpected fatal heart attack).
The truth is that many of us waste enormous amounts of energy reacting automatically with frustration to even the most minor delays. We have thoughts such as “There’s never enough time” and “What else can go wrong today?” Check to see if you have any of the following signs and symptoms of feeling chronically hurried, tense, and rushed:
If you notice feelings of time-related frustration day after day, it may be a warning sign that you have reached a potentially harmful level of hurry sickness.
TAKE FIVE
Try this simple test. Take an uninterrupted five minutes to sit comfortably, close your eyes, and let yourself relax. This is a time for idle enjoyment. If you open your eyes and see by your watch that the five minutes aren’t over, close your eyes again and continue the test. Now do this exercise before reading any further.
Done? What happened? Did you find that the five minutes passed quickly or slowly? Were you mostly anxious, bored, and annoyed or calm and comfortable? The experience of time is highly variable. Though it is a cliché, time does seem to fly when we’re having fun and to crawl when we have to do something unpleasant. If you’re like most people, the five minutes passed slowly and you felt bored and restless. Did your thought stream sound like mental clamor, or were you able to enjoy the sound of silence? Perhaps your mind was filled with thoughts of all the things you have done or need to do. Perhaps you noticed some tension in your shoulders and neck. Perhaps you started worrying or feeling angry about what appeared to be a waste of time. These are all signals of tension and pressure.
Most time pressures are self-inflicted. Go through the list of the demands placed on you, and eliminate those you’ve needlessly created for yourself. Ask yourself the basic question “Do I really have to do this?” To reduce anxiety, you must make your health and well-being the number one priority. You need to reexamine your time commitments in order to restore vitality to your life. Ask yourself:
Stop taking pride in how much you overwork. Ask yourself throughout the day whether what you are doing is your biggest priority or just more busyness. Rather than priding yourself on the number of hours you put in, use your creative ingenuity and plan wisely. It’s more efficient to take a preventive measure to reduce stress and strain than to burn out.
PACE YOURSELF
Most of us have a tendency to take on a lot more in a given period of time than we can manage. Too often we plan a project without allowing enough time for things to go wrong (as they often do). An effective strategy is to create deadlines that allow an extra 20 percent of time for human error, delays, and unanticipated problems. If things go remarkably well, the worst that can happen is the pleasure and personal reward of finishing ahead of schedule.
Organize your work so that you can always enjoy calm. This is not as difficult as it sounds. The key is to be organized and to have a system for keeping track of your priorities. It helps to have four different files through which all your work flows. They should read Routine Work, Urgent, Think, and Work at Hand. Everything that comes across your desk should fall into one of the first three folders and remain there until you decide to move it to the position of work at hand. Once you start using this system, your work will take on a natural rhythm that will free you from unnecessary anxieties.
Become aware of your optimum rest/activity cycle. Just as you have a unique personality, you have an optimum work and play cycle that are likely to be different from anyone else’s. Some people do their best work in the morning; others have an intense burst of concentration toward the end of the day; others have concentration bursts for brief intervals throughout the day. We call these periods of maximum alertness prime times. Once you understand your prime time, you can schedule your activities so that you’ll tackle the important and challenging ones at your peak creative periods and relegate mundane activities to your low points.
Substantial evidence indicates that your prime time and optimum work cycle are biologically or even genetically determined. Trying to force yourself into an unnatural pattern (such as doing your most difficult work in the morning when you concentrate best in the afternoon) is a big mistake. You’ll cause needless tension, your work will suffer, and you’ll cheat yourself out of both enjoyment and creativity.
Take satisfaction in saying no. Sooner or later we all have to learn limits. We can’t be all things to all people or try to do everything that comes along. We must choose what really matters to us, or outside demands will shape our lives.
Schedule your breaks with as much serious intention as you would a meeting with a top client. Too often we let problems at work push everything else aside. Relaxed time with loved ones deserves a high priority. Enjoying a leisurely walk in the park is as important as accumulating assets for tomorrow.
PROTECT YOURSELF FROM INTERRUPTIONS
Nothing is more jarring to the nervous system than repeated interruptions when you’re in the midst of concentrating on an important problem. One of the worst mistakes is to get into the habit of taking every phone call no matter what you’re doing. A good way to handle the telephone is to concentrate your calls in one time segment, say between nine and ten in the morning or four and five in the afternoon. During that time you take all calls and return calls. You aren’t being rude to refuse a call because you’re busy. You’re being wise.
AVOID FIVE O’CLOCK FRENZY
For peace of mind, we need to resign as general manager of the universe.
—LARRY EISENBERG
Many people waste so much time each day on unimportant tasks that they habitually fall short of their projected goals for the day. The result is a mad flurry of activity just before the bell. Both the product and the person suffer as a result. If you set realistic goals, don’t waste time with people you don’t need to see or tasks you don’t need to do, and pace yourself, then you can wind down each workday with a smooth sense of accomplishment. Of course you won’t always get everything done that you’d hoped, but each day will be successful because you will have accomplished the most important tasks or at least their most important parts. Routine work that you may not have completed can be left for a catch-up afternoon that you schedule once a week. Once you rid yourself of the five o’clock frenzy, not only will your work improve, but you’ll also be a much more enjoyable person to be around.
RENEW YOUR CREATIVITY
I don’t develop; I am.
—PABLO PICASSO
Hard work alone is never enough; you must listen to your inner voice to develop your creativity. When you are centered and not afraid of quiet reflection, you are less likely to run yourself ragged. Drive and hard work are necessary, but far more important are your creativity and enthusiasm. Overwork is a prime cause of anxiety and mental strain. Periods of rest and recovery each day and week are never a waste of time. Your brain and body will work better when you respect your biological rhythms of rest and activity. Anxiety constricts the pathways of creativity; relaxation reopens the channels.
The most valuable work you do may be done in five minutes of quiet—a brilliant idea, a pivotal decision, a simple solution. In those five minutes you can accomplish more than shuffling papers for twenty-four hours. If your daily schedule is so hectic that you can’t take five minutes of rest when you need it, you are seriously shortchanging yourself. All life evolves and grows through cycles of rest and activity. The heart pumps and rests; we have cycles of day and night. Rest is the basis of dynamic activity.
Whenever you set a reasonable goal and meet it with time to spare, reward yourself with some time for recreation. When you find creative ways to shorten your workload, delegate time-consuming activities, or eliminate unnecessary steps, you free up additional time and energy for intuition, pleasure, and inspiration.
GO WITH THE FLOW
Almost everyone has had the experience of starting work on a project and getting so immersed that they ignore time, fatigue, even where they are. Many hours later, when the task is completed, they become aware that they’ve been functioning at a unique high level where creative energies pour out effortlessly. Psychologists call this a state of flow.
This wonderful and productive state is not arbitrary. You can learn how to create it and then use it at will to accomplish a great deal of work in the shortest time. The key is learning what conditions trigger the inner shift from ordinary functioning to flow. For some people, quiet is necessary. Most people must be well rested. Time of day is almost always a key factor.
Flow is much more likely during your prime time than during a low period. Perhaps you need to be working at a particular desk or typewriter for flow to happen. There could be any number of critical conditions. Once you have learned what they are, you’ve made a major discovery. Flow is one of the basic means of doing less and accomplishing more. It’s also a natural state of inner joy, even ecstasy.
VALUE YOUR TIME
When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties, and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
—PATANJALI
The need to value your time may seem too obvious to mention, and it would be if most people’s actions reflected a true regard for their time. But they don’t. All too often people fritter time away on unimportant activities; work overtime for an unappreciative boss who’s taking advantage of their good nature and gullibility; sacrifice time that would be better spent enjoying their family rather than working late. Creating a new success profile absolutely requires that you seize control of your time and personal power.1
Above all, you must stop wasting time. One way is to ask a simple question: “Is this the most important thing I should be doing right now?” Don’t worry about coming up with an answer. As soon as you ask this question, your inner voice will respond. Listen to what it says!
Spend a few minutes every day reviewing your priorities. Make a list of everything you want to get done each day, then rank the items in their order of importance. Your order of attack will change throughout the day as new situations come up, but setting up your priorities at the beginning of each day will be a helpful guide.