Time is on Your Side
Time has flown by. I often hear the lament, “I just don’t have time” and that has been exacerbated in recent months. Everyone I speak with shares the same sentiment; so many changes have befallen us all lately, we’re constantly in a state of flux and the minutes seem to just slip by. In sessions with my coaching clients, we work on time management combined with an understanding of one’s mindset around time. Your mindset around time is crucial: it can help you expand your thinking and motivate change or it can keep you on the hamster wheel, running from moment to moment.
Your time mindset is controllable. Humans have the unique ability to both ruminate on past events and also project our thoughts into the future. Our power lies in our ability to visualize the future and then create the specifics of an imagined time and place. In a recent article on the New York Times website, Adam Grant interviewed astronaut Scott Kelly about his experience using future thinking while in space. Grant writes: “I thought he’d be focusing on what he wanted to achieve, but he was envisioning how he wanted to feel” after his 340 days away from the Earth. Kelly shared that his “goal was to get to the end of this with the same enthusiasm and ability and energy as I had in the beginning.” And by imagining how he would feel almost a year later, he was able to contemplate the “why” of his actions. This is compelling for us humans as it provides us meaning in the present (the “why”) and guides our actions in the future (the “how”).
Numerous studies have been conducted on the importance of future thinking. Future thinking requires flexibility and creativity as well as a willingness to take a risk and unleash yourself from the events of the past. In a summary of these studies from Harvard, one group of researchers conducted a study using brain imaging. They reported that for those individuals who imagined flexible future scenarios, “this correlated with creative thinking, or the ability to generate a range of possible solutions to open-ended problems.”
Now is the time to think in the future! Never have there been so many “open-ended problems” to consider and your ability to come up with ideas around possible future scenarios is crucial to your success. So I invite you to think like Scott Kelly:
Identify your goal for a year from how
Clarify how you want to feel in a year’s time
Consider what you can do to achieve that future feeling, and embrace that future mindset
In your future thinking exercise, consider the following midwest:
Simplicity: keep your goal elemental & personal; remember that Kelly’s goal was keep the same enthusiasm and ability and energy as he had in the beginning
Fluidity: acknowledge the past while thinking beyond the present moment
Creativity: explore new solutions, consider altenative options and leave room for off-the-beaten-path ideas
Time is on your side even when it doesn’t quite feel like it. The present is fixed but the future is unknown; as a human being you have full control over the way you imagine your future state. So use time to your advantage as you consider and create a new path for yourself and your business.
