Can we master time and maximize performance? A few ways to enhance creativity and productivity in business.

There are many books on the market that talk about how to live your life in the here and now. Living in the here and now is increasingly being seen across the globe as the secret to maximizing happiness, health, and human potential. It requires a lifestyle that asks you to be fully present in the current moment. It may be hard to practice focusing on the present all the time. In my personal experience and from my study of the biographies of great scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs, if you can focus on your inner calling, it will not take you long to learn how to be present in the moment. Focusing on your inner calling will give you immaculate clarity in life. Once you develop clarity of purpose, you will be able to delegate, communicate, and lead the way to realize your vision. In the following paragraphs, I will show you why.

If you are connected to the purpose of your life, you will love what you do and will be able to fully immerse yourself in realizing your inner calling. Every moment of your life will contribute to this inner calling and allow you to be connected to your true nature. In such a state, you will be able to focus on the present moment efficiently. It will be a pleasure to wade through the waters of life because you are heading toward your purpose. Life will make more sense to you. When you are truly yourself, the hardest tasks become easy to tackle, because you are brimming with determination and personal power.

In doing what you love, you are resonating with your maximum potential.

You will estimate your strengths and weaknesses accurately, become realistic in building your team, and hire the right talent to complement your inner potential. You will also be able to clear the mental blocks that inhibited your inner potential from expressing itself. If you are not good at managing finances, you will team up with the right talent to do that. You will be able to eliminate all the clutter that keeps you from focusing on the present moment. To be able to have a razor-sharp focus on the current moment, you need to be driven by a higher purpose. If your purpose is strong, you will be drawn more toward it in every moment, and your personal potential, i.e., your ability to act, make conscious decisions and create something, will align with it completely.You will be able to accept and focus on the present moment, and brace to meet the challenges it brings, or simply enjoy being in the moment.

While analyzing the profiles of overachievers for my book Vertical Living, it struck me as an insight that most people who are successful in influencing others by way of their presence or speech, do so by being completely present in the moment.I now know this for a fact because, when I asked each person that I interviewed for the book Vertical Living, about what they thought before they answered my questions or during our conversation, they said that they loved talking about personal development and were completely focused on our conversation.

When I talked to the youngest CEO of India, hailed as the next Indian Bill Gates:

When I interviewed Suhas Gopinath for the book Vertical Living, he talked about his innate ability to focus on a task. Suhas is the CEO Globals Inc., also hailed as the Bill Gates of India by BBC, and is also the youngest Indian millionaire. He had to switch back and forth between our interview call and a call with his investors from the UK. I recall that it was late at night in India, and it had been a long day for him. I asked him if he found it taxing to switch between the two phone calls. He replied that he was completely focused on one call at a time, adding that he was not under pressure to move on to the other call while he was finishing the interview or vice versa. By doing what he loves, he has developed an innate ability to focus on the task at hand and be present in the here and now.

Now, let’s look at how we can manage time pressure as a public speaker?

Most public speakers are bound by time because they have to respect a certain program schedule. They usually go through several drafts of their speech to structure their message so it fits within the given time. When I gave my first Icebreaker speech at Toastmasters, it took me a lot of practice to convey five concepts in seven minutes. I also had to ensure that my voice sounded natural and engaging. At that early point in my journey in public speaking, it required strategic planning for me to time the content, pitch, emotion, and key points in my speech within the allotted minutes. I enacted my initial speeches in my mind until I could recall them almost from memory. I then focused on pacing my words, emphasizing certain phrases, and giving time to the audience to respond to my humor or questions.

After countless practice sessions in presenting ideas to varied audiences, I observed that I had developed an ability to deliver a speech without being stressed by the factor of time. I learned that if I am genuinely motivated by a message, and clear in my mind about the concept that drives the message, I require less preparation before speaking. Most of my recent speeches have been impromptu, and I have enjoyed the feeling of not being bound by time, in my speech. I can speak from intuition, only when I am aware of, but not stressed by the time factor. When I am free of the stress of time, I feel completely present in the moment and can accommodate the surrounding audience in my flow of speech. This ability to be present in the here and now, while delivering a speech is a powerful experience. I call it powerful because such a presence has time and again — for me and other successful speakers that I interviewed for my book Vertical Living — helped establish a connection and a creative flow of ideas between the speaker and the audience.

How to stay tuned to the present, by surpassing the sense of time itself?

If you think about how Bruce Lee was able to stun the world with his abilities to push the realms of fighting, it was only because of his ability to surpass a sense of time and fear.

Mastering any skill, sport or form of art unleashes your ability to surpass the sense of time. It allows you to feel a sense of joy, fearlessness or of timelessness in using that skill, sport or art.

How do powerful artists do it?

I happened to interview Jayalaxmi Patil , a successful television artist, writer, theater professional, and activist from South India for my book Vertical Living. She mentioned that she felt no inhibition or fear in playing roles that mocked at the political system in India. She has portrayed characters associated with rape and victims of corruption. Her courage, determination, sense of higher purpose, and love of her art is hugely apparent in her personality on and off stage.

It was easy to sense her vibrant personality, so I asked where she derived so much inspiration and courage, as an artist, to initiate social changes. Her answer was quick: “I know and listen to my inner calling.” She attributes her success in life to her love for art and in this feeling can dissolve any sense of fear. Her mastery in theater has endowed her with a sense of timelessness (i.e., she forgets time and other parameters when she performs) when she is conveying a message with a higher purpose, or initiating social change by way of her performances. She clearly knew how not to let fear get in the way of her social activism, which is quite a daunting task for a woman in a male-dominated society like India.

How does Malika Sarabhai, a renowned Indian artist tap into the power of time for expressing sensitive social issues?

When I attended a performance by Mallika Sarabhai, a renowned Indian classical dancer, at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, I saw her gracefully address a very sensitive and controversial social subject of how a woman is severely judged as immoral and punished over the man, when it comes to topics related to infidelity. Mallika enacted a scene where Ahalya a sage’s wife committed infidelity with Lord Indra and she is cursed for the same, but Lord Indra is set scot-free. This is a story from an ancient Indian epic Ramayana. Mallika by way of her act mocked the social system which favored the superior class over true justice. I asked her if she felt any fear or inhibition in expressing such a bold message that mocked the status quo of men in society. She responded that she knew how to carry off the message without antagonizing the society, in expressing her cynicism. She also added that she felt so immersed in the art of dance that she had surpassed the factor of fear. Thus she had successfully managed to transmit the feeling of timelessness to her audience. By timelessness here, I mean, Mallika was able to make the audience forget about a parameter called time.

I turned to historical accounts to learn about this concept of the here and now and found my answers in the principles guiding Buddhism, Tao, and Zen. I then started questioning the Newtonian interpretation of time that uses a clock to measure time and standardizes it across the globe.

As I experienced the sense of time being distorted, when I was in love with what I was doing or who I was with, I felt that time is not just a physical quantity that can be measured; it is a very mysterious concept, indeed!

The way we look at time can be molded and changed

When I learned about Einstein’s theory of relativity as applied to time, my whole perception of life seemed to change. I experimented with my life by dealing with time in both a fixed and a relative sense. My upbringing in India emphasized the wisdom that time is relative to the experience and the individual in question. But when I moved to the US, I got used to the linear concept of a deadline-driven, sequential, and task-oriented sense of time. I studied the differences between the two approaches, which helped me better understand the changes and turns of events in my life. I then saw the importance of the factor called time in my life. To be able to tune into the present moment, it is essential to understand what the concept of time means to you.

It’s high time you know what time means to you!

What is time, really? It is just a reference used for social convenience. It is also a useful metric that keeps us aligned with the rhythm of nature, i.e., helps us pace ourselves to harness sunlight and keep track of the past, present, and future. For many of us, some of the best experiences in our lives cannot be measured in terms of time, but only by the joy we experienced. However, in my interactions with top-tier management from the corporate world and academia, which I was a part of, I have also met people who feel alive from the thrill of working within or beating deadlines.

The concept of Agile Project management or lean thinking in business emerges from a circular treatment of time.

I realized when working with people from Asian, European, and American cultures thattime is of utmost importance to them in strategizing business decisions and carrying out projects across countries. This experience helped me get better estimates of deadlines for projects and also to improve my overall productivity at work. But the question is, why do people perceive time differently across the globe? Should the varied treatment and perception of time be viewed as more of a cultural difference?

What kind of treatment of time is most suited to you? Do you believe in adhering to time precisely, like the Swiss do, or do you believe that there is a bigger poetic entity driving the world, and so time is not really the most important parameter? This is probably the most important question you will ever ask yourself.

Richard Lewis is a British polyglot, a cross-cultural communication consultant, and author; he claims to speak 11 languages. Lewis has been able to explain the varied perceptions of the concept of time by different cultures in the world. His theory can be summarized as follows: In the western world, time means money. Time is divided sequentially into the past, present, and future; the idea is to focus on a single task within a given time frame.

To the Japanese, time is relative, because they believe in doing the right thing at the right time rather than keeping up with a specific task as planned in a schedule. The concept of Agile project management, or lean thinking in business, emerges from this idea of time.

If you know how various references to time affect you, you will be able to choose a framework that will allow you to achieve peak performance. Read more in the book Vertical Living in the chapter on Tuning into the present.

Vidyangi is a book author and a speaker on creativity, communication and leadership. A Biomedical Engineer by profession, she is fascinated to write and explore concepts in exponential entrepreneurship, personality development, social innovation and public speaking. For link to list of references and media, write to patilvidya@gmail.com