#388 – How much richer could you be if you put time in perspective?

"Time is money" is stressful. But the reason you think it's true is that you're stressed to begin with.

Or haven't you noticed how time passes faster on vacation than when stuck in traffic?

Yes: time is fixed, but your perception of it is elastic–cue for the Ghost of Time Indifference (GoTI) to come on stage.

During one shift at the coffee-machine demoing job, one of those days of empty floors and bored sales peeps, I found myself looking at my watch every 45 seconds. And every time, I thought that, at least, 15 minutes had passed.

Now, in my AI job, where I use my linguistic expertise to make decisions, I keep my eye on the clock just to ensure I don't go over my allotted time.

At the mall, with nothing to do, my unfocused mind allowed me to hear the GoTI's whiny voice, "are we there yet?"

Now, that voice is on the other side of the sound-proof room where my creative mind operates.

But sometimes, creative work looks like sitting at your desk, staring at a blank screen.

If you become stressed because no ideas come to you, you start looking at your watch–"are we there yet?" All you want is for the torture to be over. You stand up, drink water, eat a cookie. Decide there's too much laundry. What if you walked to the store before it gets hotter?

"Yes!," the Ghost says, "Tomorrow."

GoTI, 1. Creative work, 0.

And if creative work, 0, potential income produced by creative work, 0+.

The solution? Set a timer and stay put, your butt on the chair. Write whatever comes to mind. Or doodle. Anything that affirms you're at it.

And if the Ghost says, "two hours isn't enough time to write. You need at least six (Stephen King says in On Writing)," so you give up?

You remind it that an olympic-sized pool is filled drip by drip, and you keep at it, one word, one brush stroke, one chord at a time.

What will you undertake when you stop listening to the Ghost of Time Indifference?

Love,

Carolina