The holidays come and go with the blink of an eye, each year seemingly faster than the last. Likewise, my work days fly by in a dizzying blur. Blissfully unaware of the ticking clock in my head, it’s not unusual for me to get so involved in the affairs of my day that when I finally get the chance to ‘resurface’, the day has melded into night and I have to drive home in the pitch dark. Conversely, we’ve all experienced times where the ‘ticking’ of each second of each minute of each hour is virtually deafening.
There are many age-old adages for this unawareness of time we all experience including “Time flies when you’re having fun…”or “Where did the time go?” and so on.
Boredom or anxious waiting make us painfully aware of time passing by and our inner clocks haunt us with their tedious ticking. Good times silence that ticking all together while time passes by us at an annoyingly fast pace.
Each person has their own activities that they gravitate to and while they are doing these activities time passes by unnoticed. It could be unraveling a puzzling challenge at work, playing with your kids, or just simply getting lost in a book. Most people enjoy losing track of time because consciously or not, people do not want to hear their inner clock ‘tick’.
As I look back on the chaos that existed this year with the U.S. budget, sequestration and the like, I realized my inner clock was resonating loudly the whole time. It was emotionally and physically exhausting watching to see how things would unfold and then waiting for answers or any nugget of information so I could plan how we would deal with it to best support our clients.
At times, the ticking of my brain calculating these anxious, wasted minutes was maddening and I prayed for silence above all else. And I suspect it wasn’t just me. I think many of us were sitting on the edge of our seats waiting for something to put us at ease, hoping to quiet the fretful ticking in our heads.
Remembering those worried times and how powerless and weary I felt, I began to think about how I could help silence other people’s clocks…
As a parent, I pride myself on creating situations where time flies for my family. I feel that collectively we all are unaware of the passage of time when we are enjoying each other.
That’s why on both fronts – home and work, I consistently make it a priority to create a “work hard and play hard” environment. But unfortunately I find that it still doesn’t silence the clocks for everyone. In the context of the office, there are many team members who experience “Where did the time go?” days while there is also a fair share of “tick-tockers” who watch the clock and pray for their work day to be over.
Needless to say, I have decided to shift my focus and I plan on channeling my efforts to instead create an environment where “time flies by”. My challenge is going to be to help the team to intensely focus on the tasks at hand such that they focus less on timekeeping.
We know there are still more changes coming, more challenges on the horizon in our industry. Sequestration is not over. The effects of it are still unknown. As such, my goal for this New Year with the services and advancements we extend to our user community is to help silence clocks so people’s stress levels can be minimized. I want to help quiet the ticking so that our collective days fly by, enabling us all to bask in the satisfaction achieved with that mute serenity.
