Who doesn't want more time?
I do, but I confess I'm suspicious of those who
claim to hold the simple secret to having more time. I've read more than one book that
proclaims in a perky voice that it's easy to get control of your time: Wake
up earlier! (Who needs more than four hours of sleep anyway?) Delegate
tasks to your spouse and children! (They'll be thrilled to help!) Use
elaborate color-coded spreadsheets for your to-do list! (Microsoft Excel is fun!)
So, naturally, when I was asked to review the new book Creative Time, I was intrigued, but skeptical.
An Overview
Creating Time: Using Creativity to Reinvent the Clock and Reclaim Your Life by Marney K. Makridakis takes a left-brain/right-brain approach to the problem of
time, mixing scientific facts, creative exercises, and real life
experiences of artists and others.
I liked the basic premise of the book: we don't need more time; we need to think about time differently. Can we reorganize our time so that we spend more time on the tasks we love? Can we change our perception of time so that we appreciate it, rather than rushing from one task to the next? Is there some small change we can make that will ease our transitions into different activities? Each chapter focuses on a different way to see and understand time: flow, gratitude, love, ritual, stillness, metaphor, new measures, synchronicity, visualization, and permission.
What I Liked Best
- The author truly understands that we feel overloaded—and she proves it. In one exercise, she suggests you write down a time amount for each item on your to-do list. That was an eye-opener for me. You cannot do thirty hours of work in twenty-four.
- Lots of practical exercises and tips. While I enjoyed looking at the artistic results of the creative assignments ("ARTsignments"), I found the other tips more immediately helpful. For example, to experience the feeling of slowing down time, don't multitask. Instead, turn off the phone, email, and Internet and focus on one thing. It's lot harder than you might think!
- The quotes, stories, and artwork from the 80 contributors. I always appreciate books that draw from a wide variety of experiences.
Bottom Line
Despite its cheerful cover, Creating Time is not a light, easy read. In truth, it felt a little overwhelming to me, since it's packed with so many suggestions, tips, anecdotes, quotations, and ideas. If you're serious about changing the way time works in your life, you could easily spend a week or more absorbing all the information in a single chapter.
To see if this might be a good book for you, read an excerpt from the chapter on flow titled "Time Sighs When You're Having Fun." Flow refers to those amazing days when you head to studio, get absorbed in a creative project, and when you look at the clock, you're shocked that hours, not minutes, have passed.
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Standard Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. I received no compensation for my review. All opinions expressed in this blog are my own.