If Only I Had More Time

5/22/2017

How would you finish the sentence, “I wish I had more—”? After basic needs are met, many people say they’d like more time. Me too. Life is too full for all I want to do.

What would “enough time” look like? More hours in a day, more weeks in a month, a longer lifespan? When I juggled job, family, and volunteerism, my fantasy was of six extra hours a day that belonged only to me. If everyone else received the same extra hours, nothing would change. Earth would just rotate more slowly on its axis. A longer orbit around the sun might make for more days in a year but I doubt it would satisfy my craving for time.

These days when I beg the universe for more time, it may mean I want clearer priorities, or fewer obligations, or higher energy, or looser deadlines. If you could wave a magic wand to give you enough time, what exactly would you be asking for?

10 Comments

Lisa

5/22/2017 08:27:15 am

What we have to do spreads out to fit the time we have to do it. So, if I had "more time" (hours in a day), I wouldn't get "more" done. And if I had "less time," I wouldn't get less done.

Going all philosophical, ... What's the difference between these two statements: "If I had more time, I WOULD clean house more/better." Or, "If I had more time, I SHOULD clean house more/better." It's all about balance. No one (who's not going through an acute crisis) ever says, "I don't have time to clean house." They say they don't have time to knit or sew, or have a beautiful yard or garden, or exercise.

Or write.

I guess to answer your question, your final paragraph, I believe I have the perfect amount of time. Whether I allocate it the way someone else would (clean house more/better) doesn't make me feel guilty. I'm a Gemini. I flit among my responsibilities and pleasures. My house is as clean as it needs to be when it needs to be, and the newsletter gets done when it needs to go to press, and the flowers are always weeded, in season. The presentation is completed the day before, and the story of Axel and Amanda will be typed out before I have lunch with that second cousin who didn't know his grandmother's name, let alone mine, two weeks ago. Warmed up leftovers for supper? Probably.

Sarah link

5/22/2017 08:42:28 am

So much wisdom in your approach. "Not enough time" is often an excuse. How many people have I heard say, "I think I have a book in me, if I had enough time to write it?" They never will.

Remember how computers were supposed to make work go faster? My experience in an office job was that computers just changed the specifications for the work to be done. They certainly didn't shorten the workday. Same for household appliances like vacuum cleaners in the early 1900s.

Your last paragraph recalls my response to friends who say their great fault is procrastination. I ask, "Do things get done when they need to be done?" If so, what is the problem?

Lisa

5/22/2017 09:09:50 am

"Do things get done when they need to be done?"

They apparently don't think so. The reason is not lack of time. It's judging themselves by someone else's standards. Fear of starting. Fear of making a mistake. Lack of a clear idea of how to do what they think they SHOULD do. I've never known anyone who actually KNEW they were procrastinating, now that you mention it! Or considered that they were making excuses about what they weren't doing. It was their reality. They. Just Couldn't. Get done. What. I. Get done. And, since they were at my house at the moment, and it was clean at the moment, AND my flowers were weeded, and theirs wasn't (clean, weeded), that mine is clean/weeded ALL THE TIME. HA! Not really.

I would love to take three days "off" to write up a longer story on Axel and Amanda. When I get it written, and show it to a guest at my house, which is clean, and the flowers are gorgeous, they will think I am Superwoman and become depressed and say, they can't.

It's going to rain tomorrow. Great grandma, great grandpa, I hope you have some time to visit with me tomorrow. I'd like to introduce you to your great grandson, who was born nine months before I was, and five years after you died.

Sarah link

5/22/2017 10:00:13 am

And along with fear of starting, fear of finishing. I wonder how often "needing more time" goes hand in hand with perfectionism, an unwillingness to call something done because it may not (indeed, often won't) live up to the fantasy of what a masterpiece it might have been, if only.

Lisa

5/22/2017 10:17:45 am

If only they'd have had more time, it could have been a masterpiece! I have a dear friend who often sticks with what is safe for that reason. Her perfectionism cripples her at times, and at others has her taking way more time to do something than is warranted and therefore taking away time from doing other stuff.

Now, I must get back to Axel and Amanda... Although I don't knit for others, I do share some of my other accomplishments and knowledge and gifts. And you've reminded me that, with most of my clients in another mindset this week before a holiday weekend, I can slip in a few hours of refining my family history story before Tai Chi this afternoon... You shamed me into it, Sarah!

Sarah link

5/22/2017 04:56:03 pm

Oh, dear, please not shame! And I'll try not to be shamed by your summer lily abundance, Lisa, but to keep gardening all the same. Have fun with Axel and Amanda, and Tai Chi.

Lisa

5/22/2017 05:58:18 pm

Tongue in cheek, Sarah! And I am definitely not complaining about people who use the excuse that they don't have time to do whatever they don't do. Sometimes they think it's a nice way of saying they just don't WANT to do whatever. And, writing a novel does take a bit of time. So there are people who don't have two hours a week to drive to Tai Chi and practice with us and drive home, and there are others who don't have two hours every morning and two more every afternoon to write that novel.

Matt

5/22/2017 07:05:51 pm

I have often thought that it would be nice to have an extra day to myself after each "real" day, to help me get caught up on everything and give me some time to relax a bit. And I assume other people feel the same way, so let's give the "extra" day to everybody. What's the final situation? Exactly what we have now!

This makes it clear that the problem is not with time itself, but with how we push ourselves into situations where we wind up feeling overworked. We like to say "yes" instead of "no" to challenges, including challenging time limits. We do this both at the point of explicitly accepting such a challenge, and also implicitly when we (intentionally or otherwise) delay working on a project until it gets to the point where it will be a real challenge to get it done on time. We see that having extra hours or days would only help us if the extra time would come to us as a surprise every time, in some way such that we never got used to it. Otherwise, we would push ourselves into the same corner we do now.

When I came to Switzerland (well known as a culture that gets things done on time), it was interesting to see that they do not rush much. If I would propose an optimistic time schedule for something, the response was "No, that would lead to stress and/or lower quality." The secret to getting things done on time seems to simply be to set up your schedule so that you will not be stressed, and then to stick to your schedule. Both of these are ingrained into Swiss school children from an early age, and most of the adults find it so natural that it hardly merits discussion. They view people who don't do this like we would view people who, say, immediately spend their paycheck on expensive things they don't need and then can't afford standard necessities -- sure, there are people like that, but we can't really relate to why they would mess up their own life like that.

Time is the one thing which, unlike water or energy or other natural resources, actually never runs out. There will always be more time.

Sarah link

5/23/2017 08:05:14 am

Right. If everyone gets the same extra time then nothing has changed. My selfish hours-for-me-only fantasy included that my extra hours had to be secret, or other people would up their expectations of what I should do. For the same reason, when I was tapering off paid work I avoided the term "semi-retired." Doing less work while ostensibly working full time provided some secret extra (i.e. nonworking) time.

Then there's "found time," the surprise extra time you get when an obligation you didn't want to do gets cancelled. A treat but by its very nature, impossible to plan.

The one real meaning of running out of time, I think, is comparative. I don't have enough time to complete X before Y is supposed or expected to happen. The Swiss solution sounds very sensible. I like to build extra time into when I tell people I'll finish something, the way airlines pad projected flight times to boost their on-time arrival ratings. And, perhaps like the Swiss, I avoid stressful party-hopping in favor of honoring the prior commitment and turning down anything else.

Lisa

5/23/2017 08:52:53 am

Matt, your second para... PRECISELY.

If Only I Had More Time

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