Most of us have heard constant advice about successful attitudes and using our time well. Unfortunately we usually haven’t heard that days are not created equal and that there are larger cycles or patterns that underlie each day’s potential. In fact, it appears that the Universe has a completely different view of what good time management is!

We would laugh at someone trying to get a tan at midnight, but many of us make this same mistake with other, less-obvious cycles. What we’ve long forgotten is that there really is a time for every purpose under heaven. And astrology, which is essentially the study of time and cycles, contains the key to understanding the best times for our purposes.

In business, we expect constant forward progress in sales and growth, our speed to market, our daily performance, and product or service quality. (No wonder we’re so stressed out!) Many of us also experience every minute of every work day completely filled with more work than can be accomplished. And to top it off, even though we’ve never experienced a year without challenges, delays or setbacks, there’s an unspoken belief that we shouldn’t encounter any obstacles or delays if we’re competent.

Regardless of how unrealistic these ideas may be, they permeate all aspects of business life. We’ve nearly developed a religious belief in always accomplishing something, and pushing forward at all costs. But the Universe seems to have a different agenda. Instead of constant progress, we see a well-considered order to the Universe that closely resembles what we see in nature. And when was the last time you saw constant growth and progress without rest and renewal in nature?

Now consider how completely inappropriate our expectations must seem when viewed from the perspective of the Universe. Unlike our goals and expectations, which tend to look like straight lines with an upward slant, our creative and learning processes are not linear! As in most things, the Universe created regular cycles for these processes instead. What has creativity and learning got to do with business? Just about everything, including the results we achieve.

The Universe set up regular periods for renewal and replenishment as a part of the creative process. In astrology these periods of time are shown by void-of-course Moons (I’ll call them Time-Outs). The Universe believes there is a need for down time as part of the creative and learning processes. It thinks we need gestation periods to develop new ideas, gather all the information, and prepare ourselves for the right time to birth our projects or action plans.

These Time-Out periods are also perfect for renewing ourselves and our energy. They occur from two to four times per week and can last anywhere from a few minutes to nearly 2½ days. Most important, is that when we push forward during these times with important actions and make key decisions, the Universe rewards us with nothing.

Nothing? Yes, if we’re lucky we get nothing or nowhere with our actions and decisions. When we’re unlucky we get led down a dead-end path with one obstacle and difficulty after another, and in the end it leads to nothing. The worst examples I watched over 15 years were when management approved new products to develop during these Time-Out periods. The result: several hundred thousand or millions of dollars later the projects were canceled. Nothing for a lot of money.

Since nothing positive comes of actions and decisions taken at these times, it seems only logical to stop wasting our energy, money and time by trying to constantly push forward. Instead these are great times to file paperwork, catch up on mundane tasks and clean the office. It’s also great for reading, reviewing, or gathering information. Or better yet, don’t plan anything at all, and just follow your own instincts. It’s a great time to meditate, or just kick back and do nothing. We all need time for that!

The point is to use these periods appropriately as cosmic Time-Outs for retreating, regrouping, and renewing ourselves. Once we’re refreshed, we can then push forward again at our harried pace, but after a break, we’ll have more energy for doing so.

As part of our learning process, the Universe also set up regular times to review, find our errors, catch up and make corrections! The Universe expects us to learn by looking back, rethinking and redoing things. Here’s another reason why our constant desire for forward progress thwarts our goals. We don’t want to take the time to look back and rethink our erroneous decisions. Even the old song admonished us, "Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow" but until we do, it’s hard to make a course adjustment.

For some reason we’ve all gotten it into our heads that we shouldn’t have to make corrections, change our minds after learning more, or make changes to a project in mid-stream. But I ask you to seriously think of any long-term project of at least 6 months in length that didn’t have or need any changes. If the Universe is right, it’s not possible.

The major periods for catching up and fixing our mistakes are known as Mercury retrograde. Basically when Mercury appears to move backwards from the Earth’s perspective, we experience schedule delays and difficulties in communications, transportation, and computers. This occurs three times per year for about 3½ weeks each time. Anyone who has studied astrology at all has heard of these difficult times. But we wouldn’t experience so much frustration if we used this time more appropriately.

What does the Universe want us to do instead of speeding forward? It thinks we need some time to catch our mistakes, correct our erroneous assumptions and decisions, and fix them. It also thinks we need time to look back, reflect, catch up with people we haven’t communicated with in a long time, and get organized. It wants us to have time to learn, and very few of us learn by looking forward. Instead we need to look back, review what happened and take the time to understand what went right and wrong.

None of this can happen while we’re pushing full speed ahead. So guess what the Universe does with these periods? It fills them with delays. Computers and all forms of transportation break down, along with our communications. (The UPS strike was during one of these periods.) I’ve always imagined that the planet Mercury changes outfits and shows up as Murphy and his crew, making everything go wrong that could go wrong. And it’s usually what happens!

Mercury was retrograde between December 7 - 27, 1997. Yes it was a tough time to ship boxes and cards, so many didn’t arrive on time. And yes, it was a tough time to travel, especially at the beginning and end. However, Mercury retrograde is actually a good time to catch up with old friends and people you haven’t had time to communicate with for a long time. It’s also not a time to start something new, since you’re supposed to be looking back, rethinking or redoing things. In this perspective, it seemed appropriate for the holidays! In 1998 Mercury retrogrades three times, 27 March - 19 April 1998, then from 30 July -23 August, and finally from 21 November - 10 December.

What’s truly amazing about these Mercury retrograde periods is that even though they occur regularly, three times every year, we still ignore them! We still pretend that we don’t need time to correct our mistakes. We still expect that we can do projects without any delays. We still believe that constant forward progress is achievable.

But in fact, according to Mother Nature, constant forward progress is not only unachievable, it’s undesirable as well. I believe that the Universe is trying to tell us that creativity, learning, and productivity are intimately linked together. When we fail to make room for the complete creative and learning processes, our productivity declines. Unable to replenish ourselves, or use what we’ve learned to remake better decisions, we burn out and become zombies, chasing the same problems over and over again.

Inherent within the creative process lies the unknown, which is the seed of our mistakes, as well as what we need to learn. But we need these elements of the creative process or we couldn’t make something better. Without the unknown, we wouldn’t have anything to learn. It’s all part of the cycle, a process to be repeated again and again.

How do we know this about the Universe? When we look at all other aspects of nature, we find that there are no examples of constant forward progress. The seasons change; plants grow and then rest. The Sun rises and then sets. The tide comes in and goes out; the Moon grows in light and then gets dark. There is a regular rhythm of increase and decrease throughout the Universe. How can we then expect something completely different for our businesses and the way we manage them?

So what’s a person to do when the business world has no comprehension of the creative and learning cycles designed by the Universe? Since the Universe is not going to change its design, we’re left with learning how to match its patterns and cycles. We need to re-evaluate our expectation of constant progress and expect changes and delays in our projects as part of the way we learn. We have the option of knowing what time it is, according to the Universe and planning our schedules accordingly. All we have to do is check the daily cycles of any astrological calendar.

When we begin planning our schedules according to what time it really is, and consider the potentials for each day, we’ll make major headway in the way we do business and how we feel about our work. We’ll have fewer losses and better outcomes for our projects, products and services, and we’ll find better ways to be productive while renewing ourselves too. Best of all, we’ll be in harmony with the natural rhythms of the Universe, instead of working against them and ourselves.

© Madeline Gerwick, 1997. All rights reserved.