Worrying About Time

An Excerpt from Creating Time by Marney Makridakis

Try this: Imagine who you would be if you didn’t worry about time. How might your life be different? I surveyed fifty-two people, and the results revealed that 90 percent felt “somewhat anxious” to “significantly anxious” about time. What’s even more startling is that these results don’t even seem all that surprising. Anxiety about time is very much a part of most of our lives. Think back to a time when you greeted a casual acquaintance and asked how he was, and he said, “Great! Things are fantastic!” It can be almost jarring when someone responds so positively. Somehow we’re more conditioned to expect to hear people complain that they are tired, or sigh that they are busy.

It’s helpful to dig deeply to figure out what is at the root of our problems with time. Why do we overschedule ourselves? Why do we want to be so busy? Why are we so consumed with time? Why does it seem so “normal” to worry about time so much? Why is it easier to be caught up in a drama about time than it is to be released from it?

In short, what is the payoff for worrying about time?

When I examine this question myself, I can recognize that the more I complain about time, the more I block my ability to accept and express love and connection. Violette Clark shared, “I suppose not having enough time, or the illusion of believing this, makes us feel important. I also realize it keeps me safe. There have been a lot of dreams that I’ve accomplished, including publishing a book, but there have been a lot of balls that I’ve dropped, too, in the name of ‘not having enough time.’ Putting myself out there more fully means more potential for rejection. Sometimes not ‘going for my dreams’ is safer.”

Similarly, artist Peggy Lynn boldly admitted that time complaints are related to ego: “The ‘I’m too busy’ implication does stroke the ego: ‘Oh, look at me — busy, busy, busy!’” A workshop participant shared that her worries about time give her an excuse and an outside source for not following her dreams. She said, “I’ve never been someone who likes to blame, but now I suddenly realize that I’ve actually been blaming time. I don’t have enough time, and so that’s why I don’t go after this dream, or that’s why I haven’t tried this or followed up on that. Then it’s not my fault. This was a big discovery for me!

  Here are some examples of payoffs that people might receive from worrying or complaining about time.

• Time is a good catchall: if I can complain about being busy, then I don’t have to look at other areas in my life.

• Worrying about time gives me something to talk about with other people.

• Worrying about time is a convenient excuse for not following my dreams.

• My schedule is wrapped up with my self-esteem. Being “too busy” means that I’m successful.

• I don’t plan things that I might enjoy because it is too scary — it just feels safer to be bored.

Do any other payoffs come to mind? Which ones resonate as possibly being true for you? For further reflection, refer to the questions in the sidebar “Exploring Your Time Anxiety.”

Once we can identify the payoffs that we get from worrying about time, we can see them for what they are: illusions that keep us from living our true potential. Simply being aware of what we are getting from our time worries allows us to make a different choice. Choice is one of the nine ARTbundance Principles, which are building blocks to self-awareness. Making new choices is one of the best ways we can explore new layers of freedom with time. Dana Sebastian-Duncan, a trainee in the ACT program, put it nicely: “When I really think of the Principle of Choice as it relates to time, it reminds me that I have the freedom to create my life and my own ‘reality.’ My daily choices add up to my life, and that is empowering.”

To learn more, please take a look at the book trailer by clicking here!
To purchase a copy for yourself, click here. 

Marney K. Makridakis is the author of Creating Time. She founded the Artella online community for creators of all kinds and the print magazine Artella. A popular speaker and workshop leader, she created the ARTbundance approach of self-discovery through art. She lives in Dallas, Texas. Visit her online at http://www.artellaland.com.

Excerpted from the book Creating Time: Using Creativity to Reinvent the Clock and Reclaim Your Life ©2012 by Marney Makridakis.  Published with permission of New World Library http://www.newworldlibrary.com

Need More Time?

Here's a teaser for our post on Thursday, when you can read an excerpt from this book.

Elements of a Good Blog

A major premise of the blog book tours course is that a good author blog is the foundation of a good blog book tour. Why? Unless the author is a dedicated blogger and has created a great blog for himself, it’s not likely he’ll be able to determine whether a blog host will be an effective tour stop. You must establish a strong comfort level and respect for blogging to engage in a solid blog book tour.

What are the elements of a good blog?

Here is the entire list which students use as a guideline to shape their own blogs:

Basic Design Attractiveness?
Title and url cohesive?
Consistency and clarity of blog purpose?
Loading speed?
Follow widget in place?
Hit counter?
Bookmarking in place?
FB and Twitter widgets?
Blogrolls?
Linking effective? Tags/keywords used?
Frequent posting 2-3 x weekly?
Quality of overall posts?
Comments section working?
Blog components arranged in optimum manner?
Too many/too few third-party gadgets?
Pages used effectively?
What's great?
What can be improved?
Is it ready for a blog tour?

Most of the criteria is self-explanatory. You might look at your own blog to determine if some tweaking would help make the blog stronger and more appealing to your readers.

Have a Holly Jolly New Facebook Year

My friends at the BBT Cafe, the social site for Blog Book Tours alumnae, are seeing different things on my new Facebook timeline. Here's a snip of that new two-column set-up:

How do you like the look? How do you expect to use it to promote your books?

Keeping It Interesting

One of the fastest and best ways to create an interesting blog post is with an embedded video. Here's one from the latest publication at Little Pickle Press, showing the book weaving through the printing process. This is Snutt the Ift by UK author and artist, Helen Ward, working its way into the hands of American children.

Click on the link and watch. Doesn't that give you goosebumps? Does me.

Hit Counters

There are programs that tell a blogger how well their online efforts are doing. Some people love, love, love full-blown analytics and others are much more comfortable with the basics. For me, as a teacher of very fundamental online book marketing skills, keeping comfort levels and enthusiasm high with my students is paramount. An empowered student is a good student. Many creatives, and that includes writers, don't like working with numbers, but a certain level of skill in measuring efforts is important, whether checking your royalty statements, your Amazon ranking, or how many reading fans you have.

A simple free site like StatCounter can show you what you've accomplished over the last few years of blogging.

If this were your blog, wouldn't it make you feel kind of good about what you've accomplished?

Check your blog visitor stats weekly to get a sense of how well your blog is bringing attention to your books. Are there any kinds of posts that draw more readers? Are you engaging with your fans? If you aren't in casual writing, does that translate to the success of your book sales? I'm guessing for most authors, it does.

What about you? What kind of analytics do you use to gauge the success of your blogging efforts? Is blog popularity (or any kind of popularity) important to gain book sales, do you think?

Comment Tip

It's important for bloggers to visit other blogs, and leave the occasional comment, especially if they like the blog and see it as a potential host for a blog tour. It's also a good idea to leave a nice little clickable link back to your blog at the bottom of your comment post. You've seen those, right? How did the commenter do that, you may have wondered?

First type this:

But replace http://blogbooktours.blogspot.com with your blog URL.

Then replace Blog Book Tours with your name or your blog's name.

My link will look like this when I publish the comment:

Blog Book Tours

Even though I pasted in the entire string in the red box above. And it's clickable, isn't it?

Now copy and save this tip for future use. Paste the entire string as your signature in a comment window and you should get a live clickable link when it publishes.

Go try it in the comment section of your own blog to make sure it works for you! It may sound a bit confusing, but it's really not.