It's Time

Research tells us that you really only do three things. The first and largest use of our time (according to researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – I just had to put that name in there) “includes all the things we do to generate energy for survival and comfort.” No surprise there. Work. We spend somewhere between a quarter to half our time doing ‘work’. What did surprise me, however, is that our ‘modern world’ doesn’t have us working less – but more. Anthropologist tell us that those who live under the least technologically developed conditions only spend about 4 hours a day on ‘work’. The rest of the time is spent singing or dancing, resting or chatting. You and I spend (on average) 8. I’m moving to Papua New Guinea. To the jungle.



The second largest use of your time goes to work’s close cousin: maintenance. We spend up to a quarter of our time dealing with all the things we already own (cleaning, fixing, arranging, updating) as well as the many things we need to do each day to keep our body functioning (eating, resting, grooming, exercising).

That leaves only 1 category left: leisure. This takes up the remaining one quarter of our time, and the vast majority of that is taken up by only 3 kinds of leisure: media consumption (books, magazines, TV), conversation and ‘active rest’ (hobbies, sports, restaurants, whatever).

What struck me about all of this is how accurate it was for me. Here I was thinking of myself as a ‘creative person’ living this ‘uniquely different existence’. It’s true that we can express a lot of creativity within these uses of time (as in what kind of exercise and how we execute it) but the truth is that almost all of us spend almost all of our time doing these three things in very similar ways.

As a result, I want to encourage (or challenge) you to do at least two things. The first one has to do with this past Sunday’s message. Rethink the path you’re on, rethink your use of time, rethink the person you are and the one you are becoming. Why not have an adventure. The only other word to describe your life is ‘ordeal’. And trust me: you don’t want that one.

The second thing is a bit counter intuitive (at least I thought so). Challenge yourself to change the way you think about creativity and creative people. Since almost all of us spend almost all of our time doing the same thing… Then it doesn’t take much to be creative. Jesus talked about change in these terms: changes the size of a mustard seed, over time, can amount to the largest features of our lives…

Something to consider…

I hope you’ll make the effort to participate in our summer series, “Thoughts for the Open Road.” It’s about change, discovery, challenge and the chance to reinvent yourself. If you can’t make it on a Sunday, join us in the podcast through the week and use the discussion guides.

Have a great weekend,

Chris