Have you heard of speed yoga? Me neither. Although Mr Google points to some YouTube videos that in fact are yoga classes shown at high speed.
Speed yoga, or speed meditation, would be a contradiction in terms. I suppose the same as a slow marathon. ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens’, the Christian book of Ecclesiastes says. And a clock will help.
I often think we don’t have a good sense of time in the life of organizations. We rush key decisions and agonize on the trivial ones . This is speed yoga and slow marathons.
Time is a funny thing. 30 minutes are 30 minutes, but for some people this is ‘we only have 30 minutes’, whilst for others is ‘we have plenty of time, we still have 30 minutes’.
Given the very subjective perception of time, a rather artificial but reasonable, and agreed, time frame is more than legitimate. For example, ‘this is a two day discussion and decision’, ‘we will give this a week, no more’ or ‘let’s have a 45 minutes brainstorm, we will end sharp at that point’ etc.
In fact, on the latter, in the heat of heavy and difficult discussions, it is often very useful to inject an artificial pause. For example, ‘the next 45 minutes, we will forget where we are and everybody can say anything and throw in any good or bad idea’
Managing time is not ‘time management’, it is about perception and protection of time, but fit-for-purpose. By trying this, progressively, you’ll have more slow yoga and fast marathons.
Buy the clock.