I am starting a new line of articles: NLP Jargon. These articles will help you understand the myriad of terms used by NLP gurus in seminars and in fundamental books on the field.

Our NLP term for today is activity time. I first came across that word when I read frogs in princes for the first time. Grinder and Bandler used it to describe a state of heightened sensory acuity. Let’s explore its meaning in a little more depth.

You’ll find the term “uptime” used mostly in books about therapy and training. “Active time” simply means that all of your sensory channels are focused on external stimuli. In simpler terms, you are paying attention to your surroundings. When you are in activity time, you pay little attention to internal dialogue, internal visualizations, or internal feelings. You focus on the objects around you, the micro-movements in people’s facial expressions, the sounds in your environment, the temperature of the sun on your skin, or the feel of the wind in your hair.

When you are in active time, you perceive the world around you much more accurately and absorb patterns much more easily. Babies live mainly in activity time. When you engage in NLP modeling, you enter activity time to subconsciously absorb the patterns of excellence you want to model.

So by the time you finish reading this article now, you can begin to notice all the sounds around you and the feel of your weight on the chair. Allow your eyes to detach from your monitor and begin to wonder how much more you can notice today…