How many minutes do you have in an hour? Or how many hours in a day? The question sounds absurd, but today people wish: “If only there were more hours in a day, or more minutes in an hour, I would have accomplished my task.” Today, an increasing number of people find their time clogged up with endless activities and responsibilities, and their work lives spinning out of control. No matter how hard they try to get things done, the day is just not long enough!
One wonders how people in the old times managed to fill the same 24 four hours, with leisure and never complained about not having enough time. In fact, they had so much time on their hands that they had to “kill” it! What’s different today? Obviously, this is is not about the time so much as the mind. Technology has made us more time conscious. Chronological time is the same, but psychological time, the mind’s perception of time, has taken a somersault.
The modern mind is so tense that it cannot complete allotted tasks in the time given. It has to budget time and treat it as a resource, giving rise to a whole new science called “time management”. But how do we do it? Firstly, find out things that waste your time. These are very simple things –– for example, the inability to say “no”. Not loving the work you do can be a major waste of time. If work is a drag, the mind becomes heavier, decision-making seems to be difficult and it takes longer to finish the job.
The crunch of time is also felt because in this age there seem to be so many more options available to the individual, so many more opportunities, so many more things one can do. There are new skills to be learnt and new avenues to be explored. Plus, there is tremendous pressure to process the information from technical gadgets. How to relax this pressure?
Osho says, “You will have to go deliberately into meditative moments. If a person is not meditating at least one hour a day, then neurosis will not be accidental, he will create it himself. For one hour he should disappear from the world into his own being. For one hour, he should be so alone that nothing penetrates him — no memory, no thought, no imagination; for one hour no content in his consciousness, and that will rejuvenate him and that will refresh him. That will release new sources of energy in him and he will be back in the world, younger, fresher, more able to learn.” Working out of this relaxed state of being will help you to see that, in fact, there is no pressure of time when there is no pressure on your mind, and you will find you can manage your life much more easily.
