Right before COVID hit, I made a conscious decision to re-design my life. I wanted a balance between work, relationships and spiritual renewal. I realized that I had been on a work-life treadmill. A continuum of days and nights always focused on a goal to achieve. It impacted me when I exercised, what and where I ate and how I celebrated holidays. I knew that if I truly wanted to innovate my circumstance, I needed to disrupt what I was doing. The pandemic afforded me that opportunity. As COVID slowed the world down for a moment, I had the time to reflect and cast the vision. I was surprised to find the answer in the chaos. My realization was that time is something I can control because while time marches on, I get to choose how I interact with it.
I have spent my career at the forefront of technology innovation driven by the precepts of Moore’s Law. As we now make quantum leaps, our view of innovation must also scale to a higher capacity one — where innovation is informed by the continuum of complexity to simplicity and that it is the result of what we have learned — our history, the cultures (markets) we experience, our passion for the endeavor and the time we commit to its creation. And this is true for how we get to innovate our lives too.
Innovation = History + Culture + Passion + Time
History, culture and passion are complex variables. But is time? One can argue that time is binary. We have this moment or we do not.
As the holidays are approaching, I am designing how I will spend my time. I will not be chasing the year-end financial goal, as in days gone by. I have no interest in a visit from the ghosts of Christmas past. I am focused on Christmas present. Because if the equation holds true, that will impact my future the most. I am going to spend my time on those special traditions that have informed my history and culture. And I am going to ensure that I do the things I have passion for first — my spiritual connection to the season and my relationships. My priorities have been re-ordered based on the importance of time to those I hold dear.
This past weekend, my husband and I made a list of simple pleasures we wanted to enjoy over the holidays — a glass of eggnog by the fire, selecting a new ornament for our Christmas tree and visiting our local animal shelter with the blankets I have been saving up for all of the furry friends awaiting a forever home. We committed to being intentional about enjoying the moments of the holiday, while not feeling pressure to complete the list. Instead, in making the list, we thought about those important innovation variables that result in a holiday season that is part of the grand design. This includes the traditions and learnings from our histories, and cultures, our passion for the season and the moments of time we have. The true innovation is the Christmas present we receive by deciding how we choose to interact with the time we have this holiday. So, what memories and life-changing moments will be lost this season by not “designing our time”?
You may be so busy getting ready for the holidays that you believe you don’t have time to schedule to innovate. The reality is that you are doing it as you go about the season. Designing time starts with understanding what brings you joy. Joy is a part of passion. When you experience joy, you believe in possibilities and your mind is free to imagine and dream. Visual learners might attach those feelings to an object or a picture that depicts the essence of the feeling or idea. Auditory learners might attach it to a song, sound or smell. Either way, capturing it on a page in a journal or notepad and reviewing it regularly instills how inspiration occurs for you. Inspiration is what impacts our passion and motivates how we spend our time — key ingredients for innovation.
Once we are clear with ourselves about what brings us joy, it becomes a simpler exercise to determine the barriers to spending our time in ways that ignite innovation. Barriers can be mundane work that must be done, naysayers or commitments we have made that don’t bring us joy. Taking an inventory of those things and considering how they could be accomplished by others — or by a different approach — will provide a solution to freeing up time to focus on passions. This means more innovation occurs.
Lastly, prioritizing time by organizing your calendar, in a way that serves you first, will allow you to be more present when you experience joy. Your passion for all kinds of work and activity will be invigorated because you feel positive and excited about it. The anxiety comes from believing that we don’t have enough time. I was recently in Buenos Aires and had the opportunity to talk to a real estate developer who invested in a building and discovered it was historic. With his own hands, he worked to restore aspects of the building with his team. It inspired joy for him and as a result, he thought differently about how the building could be used and shared. A business venture became a work of art. And that work of art became a space for innovation.
As Father Time turns the page on another year, I will not be focused on a list of New Year’s resolutions, but rather giving myself the gift of time for those things that ignite my passion, inform my history, shape my interaction with culture and result in all kinds of new innovation.
