Time Mapping Puts the Power To Change How You Use Time into Your Hands

24 Feb Time Mapping Puts the Power To Change How You Use Time into Your Hands

Time Mapping puts the power to change how you use time into your hands. Copyright-free image by tweetyspics.

Time Mapping Puts the Power To Change How You Use Time into Your Hands

I have a short but “ruthlessly honest” course called “Time Mapping.” I invented it for my Claim Your Calling students, then made it accessible to everyone because it is such an important tool if you are trying to raise your clarity about anything that requires time. It is one of my least expensive but hardest courses! (Some folks buy it–and then don’t set aside the time to use it. Buying it is the easy part.)

I recently received excellent feedback on the Time Mapping course:

Thank you for the Time Mapping course….Most interesting for me was not so much the time I have available…but having to confront being more conscious in how I use my time, which for me means looking harder at the part of me…that chooses to…resist what the wiser/deeper part gently pulls on me to do. 

How Time Mapping Puts the Power To Change How You Use Time into Your Hands

I loved this feedback so much I asked permission to dissect and deepen it! There are three major takeaways highlighted in the above quote. Here is how I would rephrase them, and what the rest of this post explores:

1. 1. The Time Mapping course will tell you how much time you have available.
   2. But its purpose is awareness of how you use your time.
   3. Awareness is what will help you change how you use your time.

Time Mapping Tells You How Much Time You Have Available, Easily

The Time Map you create in the Time Mapping course is incredibly simple. You put in, first, all the scheduled things you have to do each week. Easy-peasy. You add up the hours you spend.

Then you add in all the things you have to do that aren’t scheduled. You estimate, and then you add those hours to your total, too.

Then you subtract your total from 168.

Why 168?

168 is the Magic Number

168 is the magic number because is the total number of hours in one week: 24 hours/day x 7 days/week. Presto!

Now you know exactly how much time you have in a week, mathematically speaking. The ATM of Time gives you the same amount as everybody else, every single day. Such riches!

How do you spend your riches? How do you account for them? The Time Map tells you. But that’s not the most important gift you get from Time Mapping!

The Point is Awareness: Your Moment of Reckoning

There is a moment of reckoning when you come up with the total number of hours you have remaining after you complete your scheduled and unscheduled activities. “Reckoning” actually  means “counting up,” etymologically.

It is coming face-to-face with yourself to admit how you spend your week.

You have to account to no one else but yourself in this exercise.

Awareness Will Change How You Use Time–If You Let It

Honestly, awareness is a superpower. And it’s available to everyone. Cultivate it! Make a commitment to become an awareness ninja with me.

The power of Time Mapping is the awareness it gives you. No more avoidance. Resistance? Sure! But you can’t avoid awareness of your resistance. That’s what the feedback quoted at the start of this post says, and that’s why I like it so much and am making it the center of this post:

Most interesting for me was…having to confront being more conscious in how I use my time, which for me means looking harder at the part of me…that chooses to…resist what the wiser/deeper part gently pulls on me to do.

Buying the course, doing the exercise, and then doing the math, you find yourself committed to pursuing it to its full, logical end, and realizing the purpose and point of Time Mapping: awareness. In other words: the Power To Change How You Use Time in Your Hands.

And this, to me, is what is most precious about Time Mapping. Whether or not you do it using the course, or just do it from the straightforward description I deliberately gave you. I’m not out to make my living off this course. I’m out to accomplish something much grander and more important: there is so much ignorance, and illusion, and plain old lying about time in this culture. I am just tired of it. If you want to spend your time doom-scrolling on Facebook, do it! Just please choose it. Make it a conscious choice from your moment of reckoning.

Hats Off! to The Ones Who Stop Lying and Take the Power into Their Own Hands

Along with Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks), “I honor those who try to rid themselves of any lying.”

About anything! And in this post, and in much of my life, I honor people who try to rid ourselves of any lying about time.

Because once we realize the power we hold in our hands of choosing how we use our time, we are unstoppable. My soul-colleague who gave me the feedback has some work to do, sure: she has to have a dialogue now within herself between the one resisting awareness and being told how to use their time and the one who gently points her in a wiser direction.

But at least she knows now what to do! And she can make the decisions and choices she needs to make. It’s all crystal-clear. That doesn’t suddenly make it easy. There’s a difference! We are called RAISING CLARITY. We’re not calling RAISING SIMPLICITY or RAISING EASE. Honestly, ease doesn’t interest me. Clarity does. Removing the layers of foolishness, non-alignment, getting in our own way, inner conflict–that IS RAISING CLARITY.

PS: If you would like a gentler entry into RAISING CLARITY with time, try our related video course, “Transforming Your Relationship with Time.”