Swallow your reading 12

Back before modern technology, people laboriously washed clothes by hand and got places no faster than their horses could carry them. Things objectively took more time then, yet modern life is what makes it feel  like time is a precious resource. Why is it that, when we objectively have more leisure time than ever before, we’re under such pressure from the clock? History and science offer a three-part answer: awareness, insecurity, and progress.

Still Just a Rat in a Cage 

Recently on Quartz, philosopher Andrew Taggart took a deep dive into why we all feel like we never have enough time. The advent of capitalism and the rise of hourly wage labor, he states, is the first culprit. If your  boss is constantly watching the clock, you’ll learn to watch it too. And the more acutely aware of the time you are, the faster it seems to go.

But the insecurity of workers in the modern economy isn’t helping either. Not only do we watch the clock because we have to show up to our next meeting on time, but we also watch the clock because, thanks to the  threat of a human or robot replacement, we need to constantly monitor  our productivity.

There’s a Red Queen-like quality to this clock watching, business psychologist Tony Crabbe has pointed out. Like the character remarks to Alice in Through the Looking Glass: “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”

Swallow your reading 12

“Research does show that if you increase people’s time awareness — by placing a big clock in front of them, for example — they do more stuff,” Crabbe explains, but “when we complete more tasks, all that happens is more appear to take their place — send more emails, get more replies. In essence, if we do more as a result of better managing our time, we don’t get it all done — we just become busier.”

Taggart puts this more starkly: “Financial insecurity begets endless, anxious activity and, in turn, an acute sense of time famine.”

The last element in this trifecta of franticness seems to be a fundamental philosophical shift in how humans view the world. Traditionally, our religious forebearers thought of the world as made in God’s image, and therefore basically as good as it was going to get. All people needed to do was live as best they could in God’s image. These days, of course, we’re instead obsessed with progress. And because the world is never perfect, there is always more to do.

What to Do About It 

You’re unlikely to trade your washing machine for a scouring board or your Tesla for a horse and buggy, so is there anything you can do about your feeling of endless time pressure? The first step might simply be to gain a little awareness of what the feeling stems from. Meticulous time- use surveys show Americans have more leisure time not only than our distant ancestors, but than we ourselves did a few decades back. We are not objectively all that busy.

What we are is anxious — anxious about time, anxious about status, anxious about making our mark on the world. Which means the best way to reduce time pressure isn’t generally to change your schedule. It’s  to chill out and savor the present. Which, of course, is easier said than done

Swallow your reading 12

Glossary

laborious: taking a lot of time and effort

Take a dive into: To start doing something eagerly

Wage: money you earn that is paid according to the number of hours, days, or weeks that you work

Culprit: the person who is guilty of a crime or doing something wrong

Constantly: all the time, or very often synonym continually

Acutely: feeling or noticing something very strongly

Essence: the most basic and important quality of something

Stark: very plain in appearance, with little or no colour or decoration

Beget: to cause something or make it happen

Trifecta:a run of three wins or grand events

Frantic: extremely worried and frightened about a situation, so that you cannot control your feelings

Forebearer: someone who was a member of your family a long time in the past synonym ancestor

Stems from: to develop as a result of something else

savor: to fully enjoy a time or experience

Comprehension Questions

?What are the three main reasons that time flies

?How is our life different from the past

?What can we do to solve the problem