If there's anything that the Spanish culture is trying to inundate me with, it's this: time is their greatest ally, and it is wholeheartedly irrelevant.
Not that Spaniards don't care about where the hands are on the clock, but it's this inherent philosophy that anything can be done at anytime time -- all you have to do is want it bad enough.
Just as a quick example, let's look at the eating habits that structure the US vs Spain.
Americans are habitual eaters, and people, in general: breakfast at 9am, lunch at noon or earlier, and the dinner rush starts promptly at 7pm or earlier.
But for Spaniards, things are a little different.
A small, sweet pastry and coffee when you wake up, and maybe you'll pick at something else around 11ish. You better believe no one is eating lunch before 1:30pm. Even then, it's time to rest that food and yourself for awhile and then continue on with the day.
At around 4-5pm, you're going to get peckish, but this time you'll opt for something sweet. You'll say to yourself, "Hey, that waffle with whipped cream looks good," and with all your heart, you'll mean it. Then you're back at it until the bell towers chime at 8pm--well, maybe 9 pm--and you'll follow through on your plan to have a light dinner of tapas with friends. Scratch that, they just called and asked if you wanted to do 10pm instead. You'll say to them, "Sure. That's fine," and with all your heart, you'll mean it.
For me, this isn't a master class on lackadaisicalness, but an insight on making the most of your time and being flexible--or being prepared so that you can be flexible--when the time comes. It's my newly adhered to Structured-Enough-To-Be-Free™philosophy. Maybe there is something to tempering your day to be a little more stretched out. Maybe we should try to make our days in fact that, full mornings, afternoons and evenings where our lives are spread out so we can seek out everything in full. That bettering ourselves isn't just during the 9 to 5, and that the loss of our evenings isn't always tied to burnout from a hectic day, job or life. That a daily regimen of contentment for our bodies leads to contentment in our lives, deeds and plans of action. That rest is a marker for work completed--even though there are no siestas here at IMM!--and its use is to encourage and reinvigorate an individual into achieving again with full force. And when it comes down to it, time is not our enemy, but a malleable fixture upon which we rest our good work.
So what I'm saying is eat a waffle in the middle of the day with the knowledge that being a good steward of our time is key to accomplishing great things, and that each and every morning we have been given a full day to work, achieve, and albeit, wrestle the clock into letting us rest, making it tick alongside our aspirations in gentle submission.