A person once asked me how to manage time. He complained of not being able to finish his work and of 24 hours not being sufficient. See, you don’t get to do more because you want to do it. You get to do more only when you enhance your capabilities.
How are you working?
How organised your body and mind are right now, how organised are your mind, emotion and energy.that’s how much you get to do. So, whether you can work like somebody else is not the point. Are you doing it to your full potential? That is the point.
Why are you working?
If one has to function to his full potential, then he has to ensure that there are no inner issues. Work is about the external issues, action is always about the external, and not internal. Right now, most people work for their satisfaction or to feel complete within themselves. Without work, they would be lost. I would be very happy without work. But most people work to make themselves into something.
So, as long as you are working to find yourself or fulfil yourself, this problem will exist because no matter how much you do, it won’t be enough. There’s something within you, which always wants to be a little more.
The objective of doing work in pursuit of happiness has to change. If you are working as an expression of joy, then time will not be a problem. There are 24 hours in a day. How much you can do, will happen. What you can’t, will not happen. That’s all.
Why isn’t time enough?
But are you working to your full potential? Most people are not busy, they are just preoccupied. If they closely inspect, they will find that a lot of their mental activity is unnecessary. Generally, more than 80 per cent to 90 per cent of mental activity in human beings is unnecessary.
If they drop all that activity, they won’t feel they have done too much. Even if they work 24 hours a day, still they won’t feel like they have done too much.
If I work 24 hours a day, physically, I will get exhausted. But mentally, I will never feel exhausted or stressed. Physically, I will feel stressed because I have not slept for two days or not eaten properly, no rest and things like that. But mentally, there is no stress because I only think what I want to think, I don’t think anything that I don’t want to. So, there is no question of stress. For most people, as there’s no organisation between the mind and body, they always feel over-worked. It seems as if time is not enough.
Are you doing what you can?
If a person is so hugely talented that he wants to do many, many things, and there is no time, it’s okay. But most people are just preoccupied. There’s unnecessary mental activity going on. If they don’t do something about it, they will always feel paucity of time. They feeling this way is not the problem. The fact that their life is going away without they realising their full potential, is the main issue.
In life, if you don’t do what you can’t do, there is no problem; but if you don’t do what you can, your life’s a tragedy. And every human being should avoid that. What he can do, must happen. If it has to happen, his mind and body should function at their full potential. And if that has to happen, he has to do something about it. He needs to have an inward attention, which is not being done.
Do you have time for the self?
We try to function accidentally. We take so much care to maintain our machines. You send your car for servicing. You send your motorcycle for servicing. You do all that. But, have you done anything for your body and mind? Has it been taken care of properly? Nothing has been done, has it?
So, if you bring in a simple kriya or meditation for 15 – 20 minutes daily, that’s a little bit of servicing every day for the body and mind, you will notice that suddenly you’ll start functioning in a much better way. If you start doing a simple kriya or meditation for 20 minutes a day, what you are doing in eight hours right now could easily be done in four. So, you’ll have a lot of time on your hands.