This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of Results in No Time. You could do the Card Sorting Exercise before or after reading this excerpt.
"You want to try a little experiment?"
"What is it, Jed?" asked Michael.
"It's a great mini-lab to explore deadline pressures. A simple card sorting exercise."
Jed attracted the waiter's attention, then asked him, "Could we borrow a deck of cards from the casino?"
"What do we do with the cards?" Michael asked.
"You sort the cards into books. Groups of deuces, threes, fours, and so on. Try to do it in less than 60 seconds. Sixty seconds is the deadline. I'll time you, Ok?" The waiter returned with a deck.
"I'm game," Michael replied.
Jed shuffled the cards a couple of times and handed them to Michael. "Ok. Ready, set, go!"
Michael started steadily and deliberately, putting several cards on the table before coming to a second jack. Then he gradually picked up the pace, still moving quite smoothly.
"Fifteen seconds!" Jed announced.
"What? Already?" Michael said as his eyes bugged a bit. He felt anxious, as if time was running faster than before. His eyes darted quickly back and forth, comparing the stacks to the cards in his hand.
"Thirty seconds!"
"Unbelievable!" Michael was feeling pressured, and wasn't sure whether he'd be able to finish in a minute. He moved jerkily as he estimated whether he had finished half the cards in 30 seconds. He concluded that he hadn't finished half.
"Forty-five seconds!"
Michael didn't think he'd make it, so he tried to hurry a bit more. Then his sorting hand fumbled when he tried to pick up the next card from the deck. That broke his rhythm, and he seemed to be a little confused. He thought he'd have to race to beat the clock now.
"Sixty seconds!"
"Bummer." Michael groaned, but kept sorting. As he sorted the last few cards, he slowed down as if coasting toward a finish line.
"About seventy seconds," said Jed.
"That was awful."
"Really stressful, eh? It looked like you were racing against time."
"I was."
Jed picked up the cards and shuffled them. "How did that happen?"
"I guess I panicked when you said fifteen seconds. I was doing fine till then, no problem with time. But you startled me, and I was struggling against the flow of time from then on."
"But you seemed to be doing all right till later."
"Yeah. After thirty seconds, I figured out that at that rate I wouldn't finish in time, so I tried to hurry up. And that just made things worse."
"With that kind of race-against-time perspective you might be able to force yourself and get a good time or two. But if you had to work like that all day long, I think it would eventually affect your health and well-being."
"Yeah," said Michael. "By the end of one day I'd be wiped out."
"I guess that shows how racing against time doesn't work very well. You can't win, because racing has side-effects."
"I know some of the side-effects firsthand--anxiety, pressure, and lots of tension." Michael leaned back against the seat and relaxed. "You know, Jed, I totally forgot about doing the breathing [See Balance Your Breathing] during the sorting. I wonder if it would have helped if I had done it. It worked great to deal with anxiety when I was doing the clock watching exercise."
Containing What's Possible
"Doing the breathing seems to help keep the race with time from ever starting. So I suspect it would have helped. But there's something else that might have helped, too."
"What's that?" Michael asked.
"It's another part of the conveyor belt metaphor that we talked about before [See Linear Time]. We said time is like a horizontal conveyor belt that moves from past to present to future at the same unchangeable speed for all of us."
"Right."
"But here's something else: On the conveyor there is an endless series of containers. And in this metaphor, the way we 'spend our time' is by putting our activities into the containers. So as the conveyor moves by us, we stand there and put our activities into the containers."
<--- past present future --->
"Ok."
"These containers are all the same size, which means that each has the same 'capacity' as every other. Every container holds the promise of equal but limited possibility. Let's say for the sake of example that each container holds thirty seconds' worth of activities."
"Ok. So once I fill a container with thirty seconds' worth of activities, that's it for that one. To do any more I need another container?"
"Right," said Jed. "This built-in limit is reflected by the fact that every box on a month's calendar is usually the same size."
"And minute and hour markers on watches and clocks are equally spaced," Michael added.
"So what this means, if we 'buy into', or believe this image--and our culture generally does buy into it--is that what we can accomplish in any time period is limited by the structure of time itself."
"Sometimes I say, 'I didn't have enough time'. Is that the kind of thing you mean?"
"Yes. If you believe in the limited capacity of time-containers, and if you're talking to someone else who believes in their limited capacity, then the other person might accept your statement as being 'true' or 'realistic'."
"But as you pointed out earlier, our limiting feelings and ideas about time are not 'true'."
"Right. They may be 'true' of linear time's limited-volume container images--if we believe them--but they are not 'true' of other perspectives--timelessness, for example--where there are no limited containers and no conveyor. (See Linear vs. Timeless Views.) In fact, we in the research group don't think there is any built-in limit to what can be accomplished in a given interval of clock time." [Tarthang Tulku writes, "There is no particular temporal point that is too small to divide when using a more advanced 'knowingness'." From Ralph H. Moon and Stephen Randall, eds. Dimensions of Thought: Current Explorations in Time, Space, and Knowledge, Vol. I (Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1980), p. 47.]
"No limit at all?"
"Right. We just keep opening the envelope of possibilities as we approach the circle's central timelessness. But let's return to your race against time. Does this conveyor-container image fit your race experience?"
"All too well. In terms of this image, when thirty seconds was up, I had used up one container. I knew I had only one more thirty-second container left, and I didn't know whether the rest of the sorting would fit into just one more."
"Did you try to make some kind of estimate?"
"Yes. I took a quick glance to see whether half the cards were already on the table. But it looked like I still had more than half in my hand."
"So you concluded that you wouldn't get done in time?"
"Yes. I was sure that if I continued at that rate I wouldn't get done in sixty seconds. So I tried to hurry, and then things got worse."
"Right. Hurrying usually just scatters our energy and adds to the intensity of linear time, which is probably the least beneficial view of time."
"But I don't think I would have had a chance to finish in time if I hadn't hurried."
"That may be true, but at best, hurrying only helps get results in the short term."
". . . while adding stress, as I confirmed."
"Right. You might get better short-term results along with diminished well-being. But for the long term, it seems best to 'see through' the linear view, to not buy into its convincing structure. When enough of the linear view's momentum has been 'seen through', a serial view of time begins to appear. The serial view allows much greater productivity. And eventually, when the persuasiveness of this view loses its hold, an even more complete timelessness appears, opening the envelope of productivity even wider." [Tarthang Tulku, Time, Space, and Knowledge: A New Vision of Reality (Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1977), pp. 150-2.]
Adding Breathing Exercise to Card Sorting
Jed offered the cards to Michael: "You want to go for sixty seconds again?"
"Sure. But this time I'm going to use the breathing technique."
"And if you do get a little anxious and the conveyor scenario tries to convince you of the limited capacity of its containers, you don't need to believe the message. You can move a bit of attention to smooth breathing, and go ahead."
Michael took the cards, saying "Give me a minute to warm up for the next heat." He relaxed and began to breathe smoothly through both nose and mouth with the tip of his tongue on the upper palate. During the next minute his breathing gradually slowed down.
"Ok. Ready, set, go!"
Michael started quickly and smoothly, putting cards on the table keeping a bit of attention on the breathing. It felt a little unusual to move so quickly yet feel a kind of stillness of the breath.
"Fifteen seconds!" Jed announced.
This time Michael wasn't thrown off by Jed's announcement. He just went on sorting and breathing. In fact he kind of fell into a 'groove' or 'flow' where there was no noticeable effort.
"Thirty seconds!"
Michael felt a bit of anxiety about whether he was 'on track' to finish in sixty seconds. He noticed the linear conveyor just starting to take form around him with a deadline beginning to appear from the future, thirty seconds 'up ahead'. But he didn't buy into the persuasiveness of the form. There was no 'point' to it. He just breathed and went on sorting.
"Forty-five seconds!"
There was a bit of thinking about whether he'd make it, but the thinking didn't break the smooth rhythm. "There, done!" Michael announced.
Jed quickly glanced at his watch. "Great! Fifty-five seconds!"
Not Buying Time
"That felt pretty good! I have more energy now than when I started. I might be able to do it all day long this way."
"Yes. You don't seem the least bit stressed."
"So the breathing exercise does seem like a great way to keep from getting anxious when you have to get something done quickly."
"It prevents the pressure and anxiety related to an imbalance in the head and throat centers [See How Our Sense of Time is Created] that we talked about with procrastination." Jed picked up the cards. "I didn't notice any effort to 'beat the clock' this time. Did you notice any times when you tended to get a linear view?" [See Linear Time.]
"There were only a couple of 'spots' were the conveyor belt started to take form and cause some anxiety. But they weren't very convincing. And it never even got close to a 'point'--as it did the first time I sorted--where I was really involved in the linear view and estimating whether I'd win a race against time."
"The breathing may have helped there too. The continuity of breathing seems related to the continuity of awareness. So there's less tendency for the conveyor--with its splitting of a future apart from a present--to take form."
"Jed, we talked earlier about how SOTP measures how much you're resisting what you're doing. I have been aware for years of how I resist doing things. But the resistance I used to notice was always in blocks of hours or minutes. I'm not used to thinking of resistance in terms of seconds as I did during the card sorting. This is a new idea for me."
"I remember that the same kind of thing happened when you did the clock watching exercise. You became able to be aware of smaller and smaller intervals of time."
Jed continued, "Did you notice what was happening with your sense of identity while you did the sorting?"
"Before the thirty-second mark, the sorting flowed, or got into a groove. It was like I disappeared, and there was just this really open and dynamic movement. It went by itself, with no friction or effort."
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