{"id":420,"date":"2010-08-29T11:06:25","date_gmt":"2010-08-29T11:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=420"},"modified":"2010-08-29T11:06:25","modified_gmt":"2010-08-29T11:06:25","slug":"now-is-when-one-becomes-infinite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"Now is When Infinity Becomes One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time is an intangible – we\u00a0can’t touch it, taste it, smell it, hear it or see it – yet we do sense it – and we know it is valuable. A precious commodity we call\u00a0lifetime<\/strong>.\u00a0We often treat lifetime as it if were\u00a0tangible\u00a0– something that we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch\u00a0– something like\u00a0money.\u00a0We often hear the phrase “time is money”\u00a0and we say things like\u00a0“spending time” and “wasting time” – as if it were money.\u00a0But time is not money; we cannot\u00a0save time,\u00a0we cannot buy time, and we all get the same amount of time per day to use.<\/p>\n

Another odd thing about time is that we sense that it\u00a0moves in one direction – from past to future with now as the transition. This creates an\u00a0interesting\u00a0discontinuity: if we look forward from now into the future we\u00a0perceive an infinite number of possibilities;\u00a0yet if we look backwards from now into the past we see only one actuality. That is really odd –\u00a0Now is when Infinity becomes One.<\/p>\n

So, how does that insight help us make a choice?\u00a0 Well, suppose we have decided what we want in the future and\u00a0are now trying to make a choice of what to do next; to plan our route to\u00a0our future desired goal.\u00a0 Looking from now forwards\u00a0presents us with a very large\u00a0number of paths to choose from, none of which we can be sure will lead us safely to where we want to get to.\u00a0 So what happens? We\u00a0may become\u00a0paralysed by\u00a0indecision; we may debate and argue about which path to take; we may\u00a0boldly step out on a plausible path with hope and courage; or we may just guess and stumble on with blind faith.\u00a0 Which we choose\u00a0seems more a reflection of our personality than a rational strategy.\u00a0So let us try something else – let us project ourselves into the future to the place where we want to be; and then let us look backwards in time from the future to the present. Now we see a single path that led to where we are;\u00a0and by unpicking that path we can see that each step of it had a set of necessary and sufficient pre-conditions which, with the addition of time, moved us forward along the path.\u00a0 Hindsight is much clearer than foresight and\u00a0each of us has a lifetime’s worth of hindsight to reflect\u00a0on; and the cumulative hindsight of history to draw on.\u00a0 This is not an exercise in fantasy; we already have what we need.<\/p>\n

To make\u00a0our choice we\u00a0start with the outcome\u00a0we want and ask the question “What are the immediately preceeding necessary and sufficient conditions?”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Then for each condition we ask the question “Does that condition already exist?” If so then we stop – we need go no further on this side branch; and if not then\u00a0we repeat the\u00a0Two Questions and we\u00a0keep going until\u00a0we\u00a0have linked our goal back to pre-conditions\u00a0that\u00a0exist.\u00a0\u00a0All the pre-conditions in the map\u00a0we have drawn are necessary but\u00a0we do not yet have all of them. Some are only dependent on pre-conditions\u00a0that\u00a0exist\u00a0– these are the important ones because they tell us\u00a0exactly\u00a0what to focus on doing\u00a0next.\u00a0Our choice is\u00a0now obvious and simple – though the action may not be easy. No one said\u00a0the journey would be\u00a0easy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time is an intangible – we\u00a0can’t touch it, taste it, smell it, hear it or see it – yet we do sense it – and we know it is valuable. A precious commodity we call\u00a0lifetime.\u00a0We often treat lifetime as it if were\u00a0tangible\u00a0– something that we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch\u00a0– something like\u00a0money.\u00a0We often … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Now is When Infinity Becomes One”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,42,45],"tags":[59,69,80,86,117,149,158,171,172,179,196,203,204,209,245,290],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","category-how","category-what","tag-behaviour","tag-coaching","tag-critical-path","tag-decision","tag-future","tag-journey","tag-lifetime","tag-mentoring","tag-metaphor","tag-money","tag-past","tag-personality","tag-planning","tag-present","tag-right-to-left-map","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}