Time And Time Again - by James Moore

You can’t tell time, time tells you.  Or does it?  Is it possible to s-l—o---w        t----i-----m------e            d------o-------w-------n--------?  Or, to speed-it-right-up?  And what does working in a supermarket, a tortured prisoner and crashing my first car have to do with all this?  It’s about time.  And time to tell.

 

Most time management books will start by telling you that time is limited.  That we all have the same sixty seconds a minute, sixty minutes an hour, twenty four hours a day and so on.     Whilst it’s true that there are over thirty million seconds in a year, everyone experiences those moments in their own unique way.  Not only that, our own experience of time can change according to what we’re doing and the state we’re in.

 

Let’s go back to the eighties.  Pixie boots, florescent shirts, sculptured hair.  And that was just the guys!  Duran Duran, ABC and Spandau Ballet on Top Of The Pops, all offering escape from dreary recession era Britain.  And there was me, working part-time in ASDA, stacking the shelves of the wine section 3 nights a week for three months to get some extra cash whilst I was at college.  Whilst the rest of my days flew by in a dayglo haze, the 4 hour shifts at work seemed to stretch out like an endless grey motorway.  But without the service stations.   Bored and operating on auto-pilot I was constantly clock watching.  I started calculating how many minutes there were left till my shift ended.  Then how many shifts I had left till my three months were up.  And finally how many seconds there were until I was free again.

 

My obsession with time seemed to make it stretch even further.  I swear that the second hand on my watch would often appear to be stationery when I looked at it.  Then one night after work, I saw a documentary that gave me a different perspective.  An American soldier was interviewed about his time as a prisoner in Vietnam and how he withstood torture.  He said that he had been trained so that in those moments his mind would transport him to the farms and cornfields where he grew up, to his friends and family, the familiar sights and sounds of his youth.  Whilst working in ASDA may have seemed like torture to a bored teenager I realised that it was nothing compared to the soldiers experience.  And that if he could escape something so horrible by shifting his attention, then anyone can.    My last few shifts flew by as, still on auto-pilot, I set my thoughts free to focus on other more interesting things like girls and music.

 

Now flash forward a couple of years to the mid-eighties.  It’s late at night and I’ve just pulled off the motorway on to the quiet stretch of single carriage way that leads home.  I know the road well - it cuts through several miles of countryside.  There’s no other traffic and I’m doing sixty miles per hour.  There are no lights, just the reflection of cat’s eyes in my headlamps, blinking back in a steady Morse code.  Frankie Goes To Hollywood are singing Relax on the radio, the volume is high and the bass line pulsates through the speakers.  I see shafts of light beaming out from a side road to my right as a hatchback pulls out in front of me, just yards ahead.  Then everything goes r-e--a---l----l----y          s------l-------o--------w.  And very quiet.  And strangely beautiful.  The gold paintwork of the hatchback sparkles like jewellery as it s caught in my full beam.  I see the front passenger looking straight into my eyes, their mouth open.  And as I push hard on my brake pedal, and as I grip my steering wheel with both hands, slowly and elegantly the cars glide towards each other.   As the hatchback turns, my car slides into its rear corner.  My bonnet, which normally tapers down out of view, rears up as it crumples and folds in on itself.  I calmly watch the red metal as it gradually compresses towards me like a concertina.  Then I notice the hatchback lift off the ground, rear axle first and flip over, its red rear lights tracing an arc in the night sky.  It continues this trajectory and as it turns over and sideways.  Its headlights flash into my eyes then go out as the hatchback sinks into a ditch to the left of the carriageway.  My car is motionless.  Real time returns and I step out onto the road.   I am struck by the stillness, the cool night air and the sharp smell of petrol.   The only sound I hear is a single wheel spinning on the upperside of the hatchback.  And then the crunching of the glass and the other debris underfoot as gingerly, I make my way to the other vehicle.  Then thankfully I hear the groans of the people in the car.  And time-speeds-up. Other cars pull up.  People get out to help.  Someone goes to call an ambulance.  There are five students in the hatch back.  They manage to climb out of the hole where the rear windscreen used to be.  The ambulance arrives.  No-one is seriously hurt.

 

The collision had only taken a few seconds but had seemed to stretch out for minutes.  My experience of it had been distanced and instead of being frightening it had a graceful, elegiac quality that was deeply anchored.  Now, when faced with tight deadlines I find that by recalling that moment and state, I am able to complete much within a short space of time.  Even whilst writing this piece. 

 

I wouldn’t advocate crashing your car as an aid to time management – I just got lucky in every sense of the word.  You can do it the easy way.   By using NLP, it is possible to anchor states that distort time in your favour.  Fast or slow.