I don’t have time.
There just isn’t enough time in the day.
Sorry, I ran out of time.
Time got away from me.
If you frequently hear or say these and other phrases, this book may be for you.
1. Every day we hear about how people are exhausted, scattered, distracted, besieged, stressed, under pressure, anxious, just generally overwhelmed. Even school-aged children are overwhelmed.
2. Yet according to most experts including renowned time researcher and sociologist, John Robinson (known as Father Time) not having enough time is an illusion or self-imposed. Most people have more leisure time than ever before. “Time is a smokescreen. A convenient excuse” ~John Robinson. Saying you don’t have time is really saying you don’t want to do something, you just don’t want to say that.
3. Not that many aren’t working very hard for too little. This book is quite critical of the government and business and their backward, regressive approaches to methods of work that work.
4. Your stress can affect others. They believe stress, even from parents is actually changing children neurologically and hormonally, perhaps even their DNA.
5. The part of your brain called the Amygdala has a primary role in the processing of memory, decision-making, and emotional reactions. Your Prefrontal Cortex is the Big Cheese for your brain and essentially your Amygdala’s nanny. It regulates your Amygdala, tells it to slow down and take a time-out if needed. Yet your Prefrontal Cortex can shrink if chronically stressed then it’s too weak and shrunken to calm your Amygdala. So your Amygdala goes wild, it starts making poor choices.
6. Our time expectations are out of whack. We like being pretend busy. It makes us feel important. Take time to live authentically, it takes some courage, but you might like it.
7. You hear things like, an average high school student now has the same level of stress of a psychiatric patient in the 1950s. Is it real and if so, what’s causing it? Then you start thinking, wait, then what level of stress does a psychiatric patient have now?
8. The author, award-winning staff reporter from the Washington Post, Brigid Schulte, an admitted head-on-fire time loser, interviews sociologists and scientists world-wide for this book to demonstrate how grim and prevalent this alleged time-crunch really is. Her findings are dramatic and alarming. It’s not a shock to researchers that chronic stress is raising the risk and incidence of heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, obesity, Alzheimer’s, cancer, dementia, mental health issues as well as other health issues.
9. We have time, we just don’t always use it properly. After all, according to Albert Einstein, “time is an illusion”, then again, what did he know?
10. Find uninterrupted time. Every tweet, text, email, conversation, phone call, etc. steals away uninterrupted time, not only leisure time, but work time as well. It takes us a lot more time to return to focus than we realize. Be wary when you’re sold many items that are going to improve your life. Companies don’t want to improve your life, they want to complicate it because complicated means money to them.
11. Other countries including Denmark have more progressive workplaces, social structures and make far better use of their time than North Americans.
12. If there were affordable, safe, secure, and adequate housing people would have less stress, there would be less crime and therefore fewer victims of crime, more motivation, productivity, and more happy time.
13. Safe, regulated, and affordable childcare would ease our stress levels and help with time constraints.
14. We need to face facts. We like to think we’re good at multitasking, but we’re not. It’s a myth sold to us. Something suffers when people multitask and it’s stressful for your brain.
15. You probably didn’t have time to read this whole post and you won’t have time to read the book.
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