How Do I Remain Present But Also Keep Track Of Time?

I am late a lot. How do you be fully present but also keep track of what time it is? Now, you may be surprised to hear that, as some people are, that I wear a watch and I actually look at it quite often and I'm rarely late. Now, this is nothing really to do with presence because many people are not present at all late all the time. And some people who are present maybe late because they're not used to looking at a watch or they don't wear a watch. And there's absolutely no incompatibility between being present and being aware of what time it is or how much time you have left to go to a particular place. Because presence is the timeless dimension of consciousness. And it just means that what falls away is psychological time from your mind. Now, what I call clock time or watch time, practical time, of course, still operates in your life and in our civilization. So you don't lose presence if you wear a watch. You can lose presence with or without a watch. So it's just really changing an old habit of yours. So you can try wearing a watch and then occasionally you look at it and see, oh, I have 10 minutes left, 20 minutes left. Are you leaving the present moment when you look at your watch? No, because you're looking at your watch in the present moment. And an interesting thing about watch, unless you can have a watch with a dial or of course you can have a digital watch. Digital watches. Some people wear digital watches with just the numbers. I would prefer. And if you are in doubt which one to buy, I would suggest that you get one with a dial. Because there, the time is also represented spatially. And you can actually look at a watch and know how much time you have left to get to your appointment if it's a dial, because you have a spatial representation of time in your watch. If you look at the minute hand, maybe there, and let's say the minute hand is on the nine, and you need to be somewhere on the hour. Then even without a single thought in your head, you can know how much time you have left because you look at the space on your dial between the minute hand on the nine and the full hour, 12. So you see a spatial representation of time on your dial, which means it requires no thinking whatsoever. So that's quite good. So looking at your watch does not need to stimulate thought with digital. Digital is more likely to stimulate thought. And when you look at the digital, immediately you read out the number in your mind. And then you have to figure out how much time you've actually got left you have to figure out the minutes and you have to start thinking. So a watch with a dial is to be preferred and then perfectly fine, no loss of presence whatsoever. Knowing that you have this space of time left to get ready, then you just get going. So it's tried out. If you are not used to wearing a watch, it may be a little strange at first. Many people these days, I understand, especially younger people wear watches anymore, but they're constantly looking at their cell phones, so that's okay. It tells them what time it is. And on your cell phone you can have a dial, I suppose, or you can have the digital. Always prefer the dial. You can actually. Another little practice you can do is look at your watch and know what time it is without any mental activity. Then you can. There's a knowing there which has nothing to do. You're not telling yourself what time it is, you just know it by looking. It's a little practice. An additional reason why I wear a watch is that I, and this is simply a personal taste of mine, I like the ticking of mechanical watches and I like mechanical watches, the old fashioned ones that you wind up. Because a lot of attention has gone into the making of a mechanical watch. And somehow when a lot of attention, focused attention has gone into the making of something, somehow the end product is imbued with the sense of quality. You have to pay a little bit more, of course, for a mechanical watch these days, although they are not quite as accurate as the cheaper quartz watches. So practice, experiment a little bit with that. I'm not saying it doesn't matter whether it's mechanical or not, but the main thing is practical. Time does not need to interfere at all with presence. Sa.