Managing Time

WORKING AND MANAGING TIME

From an est Staff Meeting on June 10, 1980

One of the fundamental aspects of unworkability in the world is time. That’s the first lie. That’s the first apparency. That’s the beginning of the end of the truth. Time. You need to master time to have any mastery in the world. People who are at the effect of time, people who can’t create time, people who can’t manage time, people who can’t move time around, people who can’t handle time, people who are overwhelmed by time, have no mastery and no basis for mastery. The basis for mastery in the world is being able to handle time. So what we’re talking about instead of some new problem to handle is an enormous opportunity to create a context in the space, in a sense, and in an environment of workability. And that environment’s generated out of a mastery of time. Read more...

HAVING: THE ONLY THING THERE IS TO DO TODAY IS WHAT YOU DO TODAY

From PAGES: Essays by Werner Erhard for the est staff, January 1, 1981

The only thing you are going to do today is: what you do today.  Therefore, the only thing there is to do today is: what you do today.  That’s all there was to do when you started no matter what you thought or think.

THE "OH MY GOD" SYNDROME

Most people go around thinking that what there is to do today is all that stuff that there is to do, that is to say, everything that isn’t done.  This is a lie.  This lie leads to stupidity.  This stupidity leads to ineffectiveness.  The ineffectiveness leads to fewer results being produced, leaving, apparently, more to be done.  And there you have the downward spiral which is unworkability.

The only thing there is to do today is: what you actually do today!  There is nothing else to do today!  You get it?  There isn’t anything to do today except what you actually do.  That’s all there is to do today.  Do you get it?  If you do actually get it, you should feel the muscles in your body begin to relax.  A sense of freedom and power begins to well up within you.  Read more...