There’s some memey post (apparently originating at Evolving Times) now circulating through the personal growth blogosphere asking: What would you do with an extra 36 hours of free time each week? Now, I appreciate Edward’s motivation for the post: work less and enjoy life more a la Timothy Ferriss. My problem is the assumption that we are all too busy too enjoy life. We don’t need more time in each day, we need to understand our beliefs and myths about time better.

Does this sound like someone you know:

“I’d love to learn Spanish, I’m just so busy. Hey, did you see Entourage last night?”

The term “busy” is another way of focusing our choices away from ourselves. By saying “I’m too busy” we are not using our personal power to determine what we do and when.  Every moment of every day, I have a choice to continue doing whatever I’m doing or do something else. This is precisely what Scott H Young talked about in his insightful post about time. Time is a relative construct, really we are always in now. When you’re deliberate in your actions, you can find yourself doing exactly what you want to be doing every moment. Time cannot be wasted; time is only this moment. As Scott says:

Time is not a resource. It is completely inside your mind. You can’t experience time, only right now. You simply have memories of the past and projections of the future that leads you to suspect time exists. It is your focus on these concepts of time, which don’t appear through the senses, that make it real.

Even if you look beyond this abstract perspective, time is not a resource. Twenty-four hours will pass in the day no matter what you do. You can’t store or collect time, nor can you grasp it in this moment.

When we say we “wasted time”, what we mean is that we remember certain moments in the past as being unfulfilling. No activity is objectively fulfilling or unfulfilling. I choose how I spend my time; I choose to be fulfilled or not. This feeling of being unfulfilled comes from a lack of presence in the now. Scott explains:

If your time is being invested in pursuits that lack quality, you will feel deprived even if the amount of time is unchanged.

The first way to increase quality of the now, is simply to look for it…When you stop planning, projecting and remembering and focus only on what is happening right now, worry dissolves. The oasis is beneath your feet, the desert was just too distracting.

The second way to increase quality deals with the method of interacting with the world. Become deliberate in what you do. This could be seen as a parallel to the first suggestion. Focusing on the now is mostly blocking out thoughts through effort. Whereas, doing in the now is task oriented.

Every minute is free time. We are free to do anything we choose every moment. There is no reason to wish for more time because the only time you’ll ever have is now. If you wish you were doing something else right now, do it. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’d have to sit in a field of daisies all day. Sometimes I like going to the grocery store or the post office because I like getting things done. When we recognize that every moment is a choice, these things don’t seem like chores. If we increase the quality of our every moment through deliberate intent, life will seem less hectic and more fulfilling.