“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

I’ve realised something. I think I’m a recovering efficient person.  Either that, or I am finally learning something about time. 

I’m writing this as I’m about to head to work, where time is forcibly compressed into 5, 10, 15-minute blocks.  There’s this weird thing about time - the greater the complexity and needs of the moment, the more time seems to bear down on me.

One thing’s for sure: there’s never enough time. 

I’ve definitely inherited a mantra of efficiency - do more in less time.  And I’ve been excellent at it for all my life - recognised for it, even. 

“You're so efficient - like a machine!”  I wore that badge for many years, owning that identity with delight. 

There’s, in fact, a famous phrase Koreans are known for: bbali bbali - “quickly, quickly!” - those words have been twittering in the background of my life, as familiar to me as birdsong.  A post-war nation building to its rhythm.

Saving Time

I always imagined these would be the most productive years of life, getting more efficient at whatever I was mastering, not less. Because you know … with all that time I gain from being super efficient, that would then mean I would have more … 

errr … I dunno, time, I guess? 

What was I speeding up for exactly, anyway? 

To relax, to chill, to do less, and slow down?

In a curious logic, one day I had a realisation - I was speeding up to achieve spaciousness, instead of being spacious in the first place.  The old rationale no longer made quite so much sense to me. Being as efficient as a machine actually wasn’t as great as it sounded.

Now I feel a bit like a machine grinding to a halt while the world circles around me at double speed. ⏩⏩⏩

Is it me who’s slow, or them who are fast?  I’m not sure. 

Reclaiming time, ‘wasting’ time, being deliberately slow feels strangely weird. Countercultural. Almost rebellious.  Yet somehow … more accurate.  

But whatever’s happening, I feel like time is finally back on my side.

Taking the Time It Takes

Sometimes, when I start a working day, I check myself. 

With time pressure looming, my system naturally speeds up in reaction. I speak faster; I walk faster; I breathe faster. I have to remind myself of a common truth: if you hurry a patient out of the room prematurely, chances are - I can just about guarantee you this - they will be back before too long.  It will not save you any time in the end. 

Sometimes time is diagnostic.

Time is the intervention.

Time is therapeutic.

Time must be respected, then, right?

So why do we keep trying to cheat it? 

When I switch on my computer today, two new shiny tools will pop up to remind me they are there to help with my efficiency - an AI scribe and workflow processor. They are remarkable, really.  Tasks that took many minutes can now take seconds. They make it easier to save time.  

You know what?  Somehow still, there is never enough time. 

Some things simply refuse to surrender to efficiency. Twenty-plus years of doctoring has taught me that.  Integration takes time. Judgment takes time. Discernment takes time. Relationships take time. 

Things just take the time they take.

You can't hurry yourself into sleep.

You can't will yourself to get over grief.  

You can't make your body recover from injury according to your preferred timetable.

You can’t compress the years to really know another person - or yourself.

Trusting Time 

Maybe there was always a part of me that knew I’d come around to this lesson.

The urge to be slow, once a faint whisper, is now unmistakably loud.  

Maybe it’s the reason why, even in the thick of working as my most efficient self, I chose to agonise over writing a blog, no matter how many hours it took (and still takes, by the way!)  

Why I've almost subscribed to Blinkist a dozen times but stopped short before pressing pay. Some inner voice saying . . . Just read the goddamn book. If it’s not very good, then so what?! 

Why, tempted as I’ve been to acquiesce to what seems most popular these days and teach shorter yoga classes, I prefer not to.  10 minutes of yoga is better than none, but 10 minutes and 90 minutes are not interchangeable experiences. 

Perhaps, without quite realising it, I’ve been making small choices all this time - to remain a shortcut sceptic and treat time as an essential ingredient of life and meet it with the reverence it deserves.

Maybe what I’m learning isn’t just slowing down.

It’s how to trust time. 

The Time is Now

In many ways, I’ve come to think of a yoga class - 75, 90, 120 minutes (as they used to be in the old days!) - as a kind of sacred protection of time, and a patient, loving practice in building this trust. There is nowhere else we need to be. And we’re not trying to save 5 minutes of it so we can spend it somewhere else. 

We are simply in the time we have.  Attending to now. 

Although we achieve much, there is no intention of efficiency here. A yoga epiphany cannot be planned like an appointment.  Embodiment, as we practice, may come …in time.  Maybe that’s why I like it so much.  It just takes the time it takes. 

Just In Time

Is this indulgence or wishful thinking on my part?  Who has time for a 2-hour yoga class these days?!  Of course, our time isn’t equally ours to command.  Work, money, health, caring responsibilities, circumstances - all shape the freedom we feel over our time. There never feels like there is enough.

But trusting time doesn’t mean pretending there is always enough.  

I experience it more like this: 

No longer fighting the fact that some things take as long as they take. They just do. 

Not trying to extract ourselves from every minute as quickly as possible, or squeeze more ‘value’ out of it.

Being IN time rather than getting ahead of it.  

Time is something I am never going to beat.  

It’s about time I learned to trust it.

I wonder if you ever feel it too - that rebellious urge to stop keeping pace. 

What in your life deserves more of your time? 

I know the things that do in mine. 

The things that cannot be hurried.

The things that simply take the time they take. 

Let's practice.