The Story of Eleven Minutes To Mars
The 11M2M Manifesto and...
Origins
Like many people, I was captivated by the most recent Mars landing. I watched in awe as the Perseverance Rover made its perilous landing on the red planet.
During the tense eleven minute window between when the rocket released Perseverance and it touched down on the planet, I listed to the commentators. XX noted that it takes eleven minutes for a radio signal to travel between the Earth and Mars.
I found that tiny factoid utterly captivating and a bit mind-bending when contemplating the delays between the Rover and earth, NASA, then the live stream, then me watching the live stream. It seemed that there was this great magificent gap in time where anything is possible. It got me wondering what else could be done, thought, felt, or experienced in that time. So that week I offered a short workshop to explore just that.
The pioneering group of chrononauts found the experience so valuable that we decided to gather together again, for the next eleven days.
I am incredibly grateful to (in aphabethical order) Jean Bonifas, Sarah Fisk, Kat Koppett, and Erica Marx.
The 11M2M Manifesto
“Time goes, you say? Ah, no! Alas, Time stays, we go.”
― Henry Austin Dobson
11M2M was born of curiosity a desire to explore time and the experience of it and see what becomes possible when we live more intentionally in and with time.
Time is the measure of so many things, it can be how we describe the quality of time spent, as in “I had a good time”.
We can describe how time passes, “it flew by” or “stood still” or everything in between.
We can describe it in quantities, with everything from “I have all the time in the world” to “we are out of time.”
It is used to calibrate, to calculate, regulate, to equate. Here on this Earth, as I write, this billions of clocks, watches, phones, and other time keeping devices, around the globe are marking the seconds and minutes as they tick by.
Ultimately, this isn’t just about eleven minutes, or eleven hours, or days, months, years, centuries or so on. Whatever the increment, 11M2M is about helping is to change our relationship to and experience of time.
Time can be the measure of how our life is judged, thus we believe that an intentional exploration of our experience of time can change our relationship with it.
- We believe that time is a unifying collective experience, that exists both within us and between us.
- Attending to our time changes the experience of it.
- An intentional exploration of our experience of time can change our relationship with it.
- Great change and great work is accomplished through a series of increments or moments. To reclaim our often distracted and diffuse attention is to reclaim those moments.
- 11M2M create spaces to re-inhabit the possibility of what if.
- Imagining a new possible in order to create a new probable moment by moment.
- Attending to the experience of time in eleven-minute increments provides valuable insights that can be applied to our larger experience of time.
- Through practicing this attention together, we co-create a virtual, shared expanse of space, that exists to help people explore the experience time in order to reimagine that experience with intention, alignment, purpose, and play.
- We aspire to build this community to a global one, full of people who want to change their world, the world eleven minutes a time.
- In speaking about what can be accomplished it is not about productivity per se, it is about experience.
- Sitting still and doing nothing, is also doing something.
- Eleven minutes can change your life and the lives of others. We seek to share that magic of collective attention.