Naming Months So Time Doesn't Fly.

 

Time flies. I mean really.

It's now February. And all the stuff you thought you postponed until later ("Ah well. Will do that in February.") is filling your daily todo list.

Knock knock. Who's There? This is February, stupid!

Fourteen years ago I stopped wearing a watch. One day I noticed that from the moment I got up to the moment I went to sleep, I was looking at my watch to see what the time was. And armed with that knowledge, I thought about how little time I had left before my next meeting. The watch stressed me out.

I threw the watch away. I felt much better. Being unaware of time helped.

The first day of a month is something mythical within organizations. Stuff is due. Stuff will start. Entire companies have reporting cycles that take the resemblance of a monthly birth. At the end of each month something has to be pushed out.

The organizational rhythm is directly linked to the calendar.

You're sitting in a bi-weekly meeting, thinking: "Really? Has it been two weeks already?"

Time flies especially when the rhythm takes over. Unconsciously.

If you get up the same time every day. Take the same train. Have every week on the same day the same meeting. Time will fly. Being unaware of time will make it go fast and unnoticed. We might not sense that things have changed. That, yes, everything appears the same, but some important things have changed. You only missed them.
 

As projects are about time and rhythms, it makes sense to me to be more conscious about our relationships with them. Conscious about entry and exit. Conscious about moving from one thing to another. Conscious about transitions.

I am trying to become more aware of the natural rhythms and transitions that occur in group life.

Havi Brooks has a nice exercise to enhance your awareness about markers in time. Providing them names. The idea is that you use moons (full moons or new moons) as markers of natural time. To become aware of our more natural rhythms instead of artificial time.

But, as hamsters in our treadmills running from one reporting period to another, we might start out with calendar months.

For me January consisted of Courtship and Embarking The Beagle.
February will be: Getting To Second Base and Changing Vessel.

Of course, to you this doesn't make any sense. It has no intention to make any. To me it does. And that is the whole point. I had to think about what I want the next month to be, or what I expect it to be, and make up a name for it.

The only thing left is to put a notice on your calendar at the end of the month to review what this month has given to you. Let's see if this helps.

Terrific. Another reporting cycle.

Bas de Baar is a writer who draws about people in transition. He loves to make visual maps and travel guides for the collaborators of our brave new world.