The Luxury of Time

This is a season when most people don’t have much extra time. End-of-the-year work deadlines loom, the social calendar explodes, to-do lists are long, and there’s just a lot of life to fit in to these last few weeks of December.

But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about time — the luxury of taking your time, and the transformative power of giving your brain time to reflect and brew your ideas.

Here’s an example. I’m working with an established leader on his thought leadership strategy. We’re looking ahead at the next few years, reflecting on the topics he wants to explore, and clarifying his specific audience and message and plan.

I’ve known him for a while, but it’s still a big project for him, and for me. We started with one conversation on a Tuesday morning. As an incurable Type-A planner, I made a detailed agenda for our call. I probably had 30 bullet points I wanted to discuss. In an hour. That…didn’t happen. We got a third of the way through the list, and scheduled time to talk again the next Tuesday. The same thing happened the next week. And the next.

And it turned out, all that time was exactly what we needed.

I’ve been doing this kind of strategy work for several years now. Why would I ever think I could take in all of someone’s background, interests and ideas in a one-hour phone call? Refining your perspective takes time. And more than the sheer time it takes, this experience has also shown me the power of taking time in-between. Every week when we reconvene, we both have new ideas about our previous conversations. We hate some of our initial thoughts, we’ve refined some of the positioning, we have brand-new lightbulb moments and random inspiration to share. We’ve had time to brew.

That brew time is incredibly important. It’s something most of us are sorely missing.

Look at your list of 2019 projects you’re wrapping up. Peek at your 2020 goals (gulp). What could you start thinking about now? What could you start brewing? And even better (the Type-A planner suggests), could you schedule time on your calendar to work on that big project or new idea every week for the next 3 months? Could you give yourself the luxury of plenty of time?

It’s a crazy idea, but I think we’re all looking for a way to make our work better, happier, and more fun. Giving yourself more time is one way to start.

I’d love to hear how time factors into your creative process. Are you a sworn procrastinator who needs a hard deadline? Have you experimented with giving yourself more time, or new increments of time? I want to hear what has worked for you.