Time Changes Don’t Have to Ruin Your Routines!
There are predictable time changes that confront most of us twice a year. Depending on where you live, the dates that they occur may vary, but in most countries these changes are now a staple.
And for many or most of us, these time changes are a mixed bag. Maybe you look forward to the longer days that Daylight Saving Time brings, but springing forward also means darker mornings.
Likewise, in the US, falling back into Standard Time means a dark drive home from work, and slightly brighter mornings.
In our recent transition to Standard time I enjoyed the delicious feeling of an extra hour’s sleep on Sunday morning. And yet, when twilight arrived an hour earlier than the day before, it felt jarring to me.
The thing about these time changes, whether expected or not, is that it’s an illusion that they only happen twice a year. They are always happening in our lives AND they are always disruptive to our established routines.
Many of the changes we experience are so small that we hardly notice them – and we adjust naturally and easily. Let’s say you’re driving to work at your usual time and you run into a traffic jam that holds you up for 15-minutes. If you stop for coffee the way you usually do, you’ll be late for work. So you forego your coffee stop and get a cup at work.
We are constantly engaged in these kinds of small adjustments to small time changes. But it’s the bigger time changes that can really throw us.
What kinds of time changes am I talking about? Well, that’s actually a good question to ask yourself – because what feels like a big change to me might not feel that way to you. So grab a pencil and paper and just brainstorm a few time changes that feel large and disruptive to you. They might be things like the transition from Daylight Saving to Standard Time, or a thunderstorm making it impossible for you to take your usual morning run, or the impact of someone else’s unexpected change of plans on your time.
Your list of challenging time changes gives you an excellent starting point for planning. Planning, you see, is your key to having an agile and effective response in the moment. You can’t avoid change, but your response to it is always under your control. And that is precisely where your power lies.
So I encourage you to take your list of time changes and begin brainstorming ways to adapt to each, without losing your footing or letting go of your priorities.
In our next Finding Time E-zine (due for publication next week) I’ll be exploring a reader’s question about this, and I think you’ll find it helpful. If you’re not already a subscriber, you can sign up for the FREE E-zine (and the FREE Finding Time Success Kit) by clicking this link. Just enter your name and e-mail address, then watch for the confirmation e-mail. Once you click the confirmation link you’ll be added to the list and receive your bonuses (including our upcoming Finding Time E-zine).
And in the meantime, here’s to your time success as you adjust to the time changes that come your way each day!
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