The purpose of this article is to provide a perspective about time as it relates to scheduling and planning. It is not the truth and we believe that if applied in business as a point of view, it provides access to an empowering relationship to time.

While time is entirely a human construct and does not exist in physical reality, human beings have created a very confusing relationship to time, and how they operate inside of it. This is because we treat time as a physical object – like a commodity. We don’t even consider it, but we in our day to day life, we live from that time exists in actual physical reality!

Who has ever seen time? Where is time? Can anyone pinpoint the exact location? Now, personally, I have never seen time in physical reality, but if you do meet him or her be sure to let me know.

Simply listen to the conversations that we have about time.

“I don’t have enough time.”

“I’ll never get the time to do X.”

“Who has the time for anything?”

“We’re running out of time!”

The list is much longer, and in every case the concept of time, is referred to as a THING – a physical object – that there is not enough of! We relate to time as being scarce, and behave as if it is scarce. How we talk about it is directly correlated to our behaviour. What would happen if we spoke differently about time? More on that later.

So, who is the authority that controls time? Who gives it away? And takes it? Obviously, there is no such authority outside of oneself, however we operate as if there is.

What we have to face is that time is an illusion and completely unreal. That may be too much to confront for the moment because of our imprinting with the idea that time is to be cherished as a physical object. We would actually have to consider another point of view, and let go of a point of view that we have been invested in for so long. Human beings have been indoctrinated to believe that time is scarce – like there isn’t enough of it to go around for everybody! Therefore, some people have lots of time, while others don’t have much time at all. Because, like all physical objects, if you think there isn’t enough of it, you will immediately operate consistent with that thought.

And when you relate to something that has no physicality to it, such as time – or any concept or idea – and you begin to ascribe physicality to that thing – as if that thing were actually real – it presents a fundamental breakdown in relating to what is real, and what is not real.

And this is the major breakdown that needs to be addressed before anyone begins to address scheduling or planning in their business.

Most business plans and schedules are rushed, precisely by the very reason that people try to get it all done inside of a context that time is scarce. To get to the next level of effectiveness as a business person as it relates to scheduling and planning, one needs to explore the idea that there is all of the time in the world to get done whatever needs to get done in our business endeavours. That is a powerful place to look at planning from, because you are not forcing anything. The planning and scheduling process can happen naturally without us worrying if it will or will not happen simply by allowing it to be just the way it is.

In this model, we actually have to deal with the fact that we generate time, because time, like everything else in the realm of being human, is a linguistic phenomenon. In other words, it arises in language and how we talk about it.

When you, in your business, tell yourself that “there is only 24 hours in a day” or “I don’t have enough time,” you are putting limits on something that is unlimited. Time is generated and not a physical object that can be manipulated by human beings. Obviously, if you think that something is scare or running out, people have the experience of anxiety. What you should know is that this is a linguistic trap, and to escape we need to start speaking differently about time.

It begins with asking questions that open a dialogue for generating opportunities for growth. “How could we do that project/business etc?”

“What would it take to produce that result?”

“Who can we ask to assist us in getting this done?”

If you ask different questions, it will directly shift how you schedule and how you plan because you will be focusing on things that you have control over. So what needs to shift is how we speak about time in our day-to-day conversations if we want to have a different experience and relationship to time.

This is a challenging concept to understand, and simply asking different questions will alter your experience as a business person from a scarcity of time to time being a non-issue. From the experience of anxiety and feeling rushed, to an experience of peace of mind.

This occurs because we engage our creative ability to generate time and produce the result we are intending to have, simply as a matter of our consideration and saying so.

If you can get that, you just may alter your relationship to time and enrich your life and your business planning and scheduling process.