Balance | Time

This is the first entry in this week’s series: Balance.

Life is about balance. It’s about balancing competing interests and motivations, commitments, your checkbook, and so many other things. Why is balance so important? Because balance is the only way that we as humans are able to manipulate our most precious, un-renewable resource: time.

Time is truly our most precious resource. Other things can be replaced, restarted, renewed, etc. Time ticks on, no matter what. Time cannot be regained, replanted, or relived, despite the recent rash of commercials from a certain soda company and the release of a movie based on manipulating time through warm water.

Let’s examine why balance allows us to access our time. Think about your average day. In that day, you make decisions about what you are going to do, and when you are going to do those things. The motivations behind these decisions are different, and dynamic. You may be doing certain things because it’s your job, or because you’re motivated by altruism, or you like volunteering, or you simply enjoy that particular activity. All of those reasons are equally valid. The bottom line, however, is that it takes time to do these things. So much time, in fact, that you likely must decide on an order in which to do the things you’ve decided to do, and perhaps even decide that some things are not feasible and won’t be getting done.

Credit: Flickr user CraigAllen

Indeed, it takes time to do anything.

This is where balance comes into play.

Balance allows you to transform your interactions with time from a passive activity to an active relationship. Without balance, time simply ticks by at a steady rate. You lose the same amount each day, never to be recovered. By engaging balance, however, you are now able to manipulate your time. You can direct it – put two hours over here, put an hour over here, etc.

Balance allows you to spend your time how you see fit. By balancing your own activities, desires, obligations, and activities, you can dictate where your time is spent – an activity that is amazingly empowering.

Now, make no mistake, balance does not allow you to change the speed at which time passes, neither slowing it down nor speeding it up. Instead, imagine balance to resemble the switch on a set of railroad tracks. The train will keep coming, at the speed that it is already traveling. You, however, are able to dictate which direction the train travels, and through this direction (and re-direction), meet the goals and needs that you have prioritized, and dictate how things might proceed.

The rest of this week will explore some techniques to enhance your balance and your relationship with time, talk about ways to use “open time” to your advantage, and to retain control of your own life/time balance, resisting the negative influences of outside forces.