How to be the master of your time

Time is a wily weasel- I’ve spent most my life looking for it or losing it all together. Never seem to find enough hours in the day to get the to-do list ticked. Chatting to friends and fellow entrepreneurs I realised that time is a cruel master to many.

 In the current lockdown, time seems to be especially illusive- slowing down and speeding up with no rhyme or reason. Days melt together like hot butter blocks, but weeks feel like years.

 Last year I was lucky enough to be a guest participant in an entrepreneurial workshop where, after every person there mentioned time or the lack there-of as one of their 3 major challenges, this subject was explored. While people often fall back on procrastination as the culprit that allows the hours to slip through the sieve, there was a possible solution that we arrived at. A perspective change.

 Perspective is a gift. Somewhere on my journey I learned that I choose my perspective and can choose to change it. This has been one of the most incredible lessons that has allowed me to feel “a part of” rather than “apart from” the community around me. This has allowed me to wear life like a loose garment, rather than being restricted by my own expectations of myself and the world.

 The solution to my time problem is merely a change of perspective. I am now time’s master. I choose how I spend my time. I am ruthlessly efficient in the hours I choose to work. And meeting a friend in a coffee shop is now “choice to connect” rather than procrastination.

 No longer a slave to time I now have the ability to pack it in or stretch it out like pizza dough. Mmm Pizza… Choose to enjoy your time by yourself, with a friend, with a partner or with family. It is all a gift. It is all a mystery. Revel in it.

Image and text: Alistair Barnes