I know I’m not alone.
On the one hand, I’m continually marveling at the incredible benefits of technology, particularly AI and telecommunications.
On any given day, I’ll have a Zoom meeting with a client across the country, another in Europe, while two different freelancers in other corners of the world are solving my tech problems.
That’s amazing.
And yet, on the other hand, I’m also feeling incredibly “Time-Poor,” a phrase that has surfaced in several recent articles in Harvard Business Review.
(Sadly, I haven’t had a moment to read any of them yet.)
The statistics bear me out.
- 62% of U.S. workers don’t take all their vacation days — leaving free time on the table.
- 1 in 5 employees say their work feels “under control” only one day a week or never.
- When asked what would best reduce stress, the top answer wasn’t more money or perks — it was more time off.
And yet that really doesn’t solve anything since we’ve been warned by the smartest minds in digital media such as Douglas Rushkoff that:
“Our society has reoriented itself to the present moment.
Everything is live, real time, and always-on. It’s not a mere speeding up, however much our lifestyles and technologies have accelerated the rate at which we attempt to do things.
It’s more of a diminishment of anything that isn’t happening right now—and the onslaught of everything that supposedly is.”
Said more simply, I’ve come to realize that:
Every app is trying to steal your time.
This month in the Transformation Book Club we’re reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.
Burkeman is a philosophical realist — a gentle (if sometimes cranky) iconoclast of productivity culture, reminding us that time isn’t a problem to solve but a dance with finitude.
(Speaking of which, this month’s Meditation — Dancing With Time — is HERE.)
In the book, he recounts the classic business school parable—popularized by Stephen Covey’s First Things First—of the professor arriving in class with rocks, pebbles, and sand.
He asks the students if they can all fit in a jar.
In case you haven’t heard the punchline before, allow me to spoil it:
You have to start with the big rocks first or else it doesn’t work.
Burkeman, however, isn’t buying it.
He writes that:
The real problem of time management today, though, isn’t that we’re bad at prioritizing the big rocks.
It’s that there are too many rocks—and most of them are never making it anywhere near that jar.
There is, of course, also the unasked question: why are you trying to put the rocks in a jar in the first place?
There are some many other things you can put in jars…
It’s no surprise that dancers and choreographers say things like:
“Dance is the hidden language of the soul.”
Martha Graham
Or even more specifically:
“Dance is the movement of time.”
Merce Cunningham:
Yet that’s not why I titled this month’s meditation Dancing with Time.
First, I was thinking about Burkeman’s core premise:
The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder.
It’s sometimes truly shocking the people who really “get” that.
For example, Emma Goldman, remembered as a radical political critic — also reminded us that no revolution is worth having if you can’t dance.
Or the philosopher Nietzsche — who did go on a bit about death, suffering, nihilism, and the “death of God,” also wrote that:
“We should consider every day lost
on which we have not danced at least once.”
Speaking of movement…
At the yoga center where I trained in NYC, the first classes I was given to teach were an hour and forty-five minutes.
An almost two-hour class — and two full hours for the advanced one — felt perfectly normal.
Over two decades later, now that’s the length only of a full workshop or special event.
Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate the economy of a focused class.
In fact, I thrive on religiously taking three Mon/Wed/Fri 45-minute online barre classes a week with my friends at CoreBarreFit HERE.
What I lament is that I don’t feel I’d have the time for regular two-hour classes myself anymore — yet somehow in the early aughts I did.
How is it that with significantly greater resources and technology on my side, I no longer do?
Vlad, of course, is a genius at time management.
Our routine is consistent enough that he’s always alert to the next item on the schedule, whether it’s the late afternoon hike or the trip to Trader Joe’s.
There’s a rhythm and reciprocity he anticipates, much like in a good game of Tug of War.
Trainers often point out that the game of tug can strengthen one’s bond because dog and human must stay in sync — reading each other’s energy and adjusting pressure, grip, speed.
In fact, that’s a lot like partner dance.
Tug of War is an activity for which he’s always available.
Or, to return to the MBA parable, it’s definitely one of his “Big Rocks,” one he’d never forget.
Lines from a Rumi poem come to mind:
“There is one thing in this world you must never forget to do.
If you forget everything else and not this, there’s nothing to worry about.
But if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.”
We’ve all had the experience of traveling to the store to buy one thing, returning home only to realize we’d forgotten our mission.
Such situations range from comic to annoyingly inconvenient.
It’s far worse, though to go through life that way.
That’s a huge part of why I like working with creative and life-reinvention clients, for as Maya Angelou wrote:
“There is no greater agony
than bearing an untold story inside you.”
(Again, if you want to work with me this fall to uncover that, a few slots are still open— reach out HERE.)
As Burkeman writes:
If you plan to spend some of your four thousand weeks doing what matters most to you, then at some point you’re just going to have to start doing it.
In the end, the calendar will always be overcrowded, the rocks too many for the jar.
But we can still choose to move with the music that’s here now, letting the dance itself — or even just a few moments of Tug of War — be enough.
We must tell the story we have to tell in order to live the life we’re meant to live.
When it comes to our four thousand weeks, that may be the one thing we must never forget.