Customer Reviews

Time Shifting

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Rectschaffen's book provides a profound perspective for anyone who is seeking a deeper sense of being in these times. He speaks to many audiences, whether you are just beginning your search or further along. I am retired and his words on aging struck a very clear chord with me. I am only sad that I was not exposed to these views years ago. He is definitely on to a way of viewing the use of time in a sane and meaningful way. This book is well written and covers a great deal of the choices in our lives in terms of the use of one of our most precious gifts, our time. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is not satisfied with the pace and the priorities that they might have embraced as they move through life.

While I don't consider myself an "always busy, Type A" personality, there are many times when I wish I could be more "there in the moment" of whatever I was doing. I heard about the book Time Shifting: Creating More Time to Enjoy Your Life by Stephan Rechtschaffen, and thought it might be of assistance in helping me in that endeavor. I don't know that I got everything out of the book that the author intended, but I did pick up a few tips that should help...

Contents:

Part 1: Towards Time Freedom; Entrainment and the Rhythm of Life; Mental and Emotional Time; Stress and Anxiety; Expanding the Moment; Timeshifting; Exercises in Timeshifting

Part 2: Self; Relationships; Children; Work; Sports and Play; Health; Aging; Death and Dying; Planning Ahead; Society; The Future

A Final Word; Bibliography; Acknowledgments

Timeshifting isn't a new time management technique to allow you to eke out more minutes in a day. Instead, it's a mindset that allows you to get in tune with the rhythm of your life and surrounding events. Rather than trying to do more and more in every moment, you should step back, take a deep breath, and allow yourself to slow down and appreciate the moment for what it is. It's a shift from a time-based sense of life to a cycle-based lifestyle. In many cases, you find yourself in a particular situation either 1) replaying the past, or 2) anticipating the future. As such, there's no "now". Rechtschaffen asks you to put past and future out of your mind, and concentrate simply on "now" in whatever you're doing.

I had one of these moments recently on vacation at DisneyWorld. It was about 7 pm, and a major thunder and lightning storm was going on. I pulled up a chair and just watched... I then noticed a spider between the rails of our balcony, and he was spinning a web. I simply marveled at the movement and structure of what the spider was building, and how complex it all appears when finished. Before I knew it, I had spent nearly two hours just enjoying nature, oblivious to time and other activities. And it will likely be one of the memories of this vacation that doesn't fade...

I liked Part 1 of this book better than Part 2. Where Part 1 deals with the concepts of timeshifting in general, Part 2 gets into application of the concept in particular areas of your life. It seemed to get more ethereal and new-age'ish than what I was comfortable with, and I found myself not following quite as closely. You could say I was spending more time in the past and future than I was in the "now" of reading... :)

Generally, a useful concept to get more enjoyment out of the ordinary events of life. The author does a good job of explaining it all, and I can see where I will make some adjustments in what I do and how I do it...

This book is a great reminder of the spice and foundation one's life really depends on--that is, time. It is the non-renewable resource. I believe anyone who feels that life's circumstances has a greater hold on them, then they do on it, should read this book.

I work in the crisis field, and one's job IS to give your time to others in crisis--and you can often find yourself far removed from yourself, in the name of helping, with little personal resources left. This book has helped me remember some important personal standards that I need to adhere too, plus great ideas on how to get my life back.

Thanks,
Joe

This book has been a great gift - an extremely easy read, it has helped me to re-define my relationship to time. In a profound yet simple approach, I've found that being at the effect of time is a self-made prison - this book has helped me to be free. It's a great read.

This is the second time I had to write that review as a result of a mistake with internet connection. I've lost all I wrote before. If I didn't lost my temper in writing the similar thing for the second time, I can easily say that that book has a part in that.

Time is not just a quantity that we keep track of it, but a quality that we must be aware of. The more we aware of it, the more chance to turn mundane into extraordinary times.

It is more helpful trying to feel emotions rather than surprassing them. When we are not feeling the moment, emotional reactions rule us with the lymbic system to feel in certain predetermined ways but if we can slow down, we can disengage ourselves from those emotional reactions.

Apart from philosophical explanations, there are many practical tips which can easily be used in our daily lives.

In sum, there are more than I can describe here. It is better to read and discover yourself.

In this book Dr. Rechtschaffen exposes the beauty, texture and sensation of time in an amazing way that changes your very relationship with the time that you have now and have had in the past.

In the foreward to the book Thomas Moore writes "As a writer I have had one ambition: to be able to make my living by writing so that I can get up
in the morning and have before me a stretch of time that will very from morning to evening and from day to day. I don't want to be free to do things,
as much as I want the variety of lifes possabilities to wrap time around me in the many different colorings and tonalities that are possible."
The book shows you how have this reality shine through your own life and affairs.
- you need a copy of this book

In this book Dr. Rechtschaffen exposes the beauty, texture and sensation of time in an amazing way that changes your very relationship with the time that you have now and have had in the past.
In the foreward to the book Thomas Moore writes "As a writer I have had one ambition: to be able to make my living by writing so that I can get up in the morning and have before me a stretch of time that will very from morning to evening and from day to day. I don't want to be free to do things, as much as I want the variety of lifes possabilities to wrap time around me in the many different colorings and tonalities that are possible."
The book shows you how to live a reality like this.
The book needs to be reprinted - you need a copy.

The basic message you find in Time Shifting and in similar books goes as follows: "Manage your life before someone else does!" Especially in a period where companies start firing thousands of people, ask yourself the question if you are living your life the way you want it. Working harder is no option: especially in the US, people have already been increasing their workload in the 1990's. Nobody seems to have time for the promised "leisure economy". Personally, I adhere to these messaged to some extent, but much depends on how they are formulated.

Somewhere in the book one can read that Rechtschaffen is a doctor. Generally, when one is ill it makes sense to see a doctor who prescribes what the patient needs. I don't know about you, but I don't need a prescription on how you have to organize.

Rechtschaffen just rehashes the ideas that many others have written about, including Steven Covey, Ram Dass, Daniel Goleman, Harville Hendrixs, Servan-Schreiber, Juliet Schor, ... and that training programs as EST have been training on for over 30 years. That would be defendable if his book would include the best of all these sources. Unfortunately, instead of explaining connecting principles to the reader, he gives you a weak decoction of these other books.

A book on this subject which has been a national bestseller is "Your Money or Your life", written in 1992 by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.

Patrick E.C. Merlevede, MSc -- co-author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"

This is quite simply, an amazing book. It explores, most powerfully, how our perceptions of time affect our experience of time - and how we can learn to manage that. Stephen Rechtschaffen does a beautiful job of laying out the difference between clock time and what you might call soul time.

His premise is that if we can shift the way we think about time and realize that every moment is filled with rhythms and possibilities that we usually don't even imagine, then we can become masters of our time, and our lives, in a whole new way!

This is not about going faster or doing more -- it is about living more fully and more deeply. It is about getting to know ourselves again -- or maybe for the first time. It is about living NOW - which is everything.

If you read only one book about time this year, this is the one that I would recommend. It is insightful, challenging, thought-provoking, and ultimately -- if you want -- life changing!

Boy, I hate to do a bad review! I attended Dr. Rechtschaffen lecture of the same name last year. Fifteen minutes into the lecture...I got it already! Baba Ram Das said it better. Much better. But I picked up the book anyway. It was well written and would probably be very good for someone just beginning to feel dissatisfied with the mundane.