and also uncover practical tools that will let you spend less energy on managing time, the better to luxuriate in it.
Your brain is always playing games with time. Be aware of its tricks and you can reset the pace. Read on and you will learn plenty about your mind and body; how fast food and bright colours change your tempo; why deadlines can kill, but inserting the words ‘if’ and ‘then’ into a plan ups its odds of success; how autonomy takes the stress out of time pressure and cunning time thieves take your good intentions for a walk; which activities best suit particular hours of the day; how we turn into habit zombies; ways to speed up, or slow down, or become an early bird; why you sleep when you do; and how to harness momentum, by making time simpler.
Feel free to skip ahead to whichever chapter seems most relevant. I have tried to satisfy not only readers who like to curl up with a mind-expanding topic, but also those who read guerrilla-style, snatching what they need on the run.
Philip Larkin wrote:
This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.
It seems that way, if you let it. All too easily we overlook the role that our attitude towards time plays in how life unfolds. But raise our awareness and with minute changes we can transform our outlook. And it is worth it.
In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Virgil drags Dante up the mountain to Paradise, away from the terrible waiting room of Purgatory, as fast as he can: ‘He who best discerns the worth of time is most distressed whenever time is lost.’ Those who best discern time’s worth are generally those who have brushed the crust of mortality – the survivors, the bereaved, those staring down the barrel of a terminal diagnosis. Like my parents’ friend, Henrietta, who described the gift she had received, after safely emerging from a life-threatening illness. ‘My husband and I became acutely aware how little time there is. There is no point deferring. When we wanted to do something, we just did it. It was the best time in our marriage.’ Their joy lasted two years, until his sudden death. His final words to her were, ‘That was a really lovely day.’ I would like them to be mine.
Years of my life have been cramped by the inhibiting belief that I did not have enough time. Writing this book reminded me that we can all take greater pleasure from what we have. Why wait until its sands are low? ‘In truth, there is enormous space in which to live our everyday lives,’ wrote Buddhist thinker Pema Chödrön. It is never too late to seek this sense of abundance.
Now is the time of your life. What might happen if you spent your day only on what was necessary or delightful to take you where you want to go? Millions have been inspired by Marie Kondo’s advice to tidy up, and to ditch possessions that do not serve a purpose or spark joy. How much more might we gain from decluttering time?
Imagine a day in which you accomplish everything that you intend, as well as coping with all the unanticipated demands, without getting thrown off track. A day in which you feel one step ahead, not constantly behind, trapped in a reactive cycle that seems to drag you backwards. A day of hours that feel satisfying, not cramped. A day in which the minutes for dull tasks dash by while hours for pleasure meander. A day that exploits the give in time’s elastic, giving you more time off. A day of miracles?
Not a bit. Your definition of time rich might mean working more effectively, or elegantly doing less. Whatever your goal, if you cease to feel like time’s slave then everything improves.
The mistake of rushing is to imagine that your time is not your own. The solution is to live in your own good time, at a pace that suits you. So quit chasing white rabbits. Stop stockpiling self-reproach. Set aside a few minutes, perhaps a few hours, to ignore the clock, and rediscover what time has always been, since the first hominid tracked the day’s passage by the slant of his shadow in the sun: your servant.
Here is a question. Give yourself three seconds to answer. Do not scratch your head, worrying about getting it wrong. There is no wrong answer. You want your first response, because the purpose of this experiment is to open a window into your mind.
My birthday party is not happening on Saturday due to a scheduling clash with my midlife crisis. The party will go ahead, but has been moved forward by three days.
What day will the party be held?
Did you answer Tuesday? Or Wednesday?
If the first, then you have what psychologists define as an ego-moving perspective on time. This means that you see time as a track that you run along. You are a forward-moving agent, racing towards your future.
If the second, your perspective is time-moving: you stand there, facing time’s incoming tide.
These two ways of perceiving time are not simply spatial metaphors. They express divergent psychological dispositions. I always give the second answer and rather wish that I did not. But it is fine to regard time as a mighty force, so long as you do not feel like its victim. View it as the vehicle of your life and it is easier to drive to your chosen destination.
Part One
Includes: how time created consciousness; why Singapore is faster than New York; why delivery boys feared the noose; how wealth accelerates us but the costlier our hours, the poorer they feel; why we should listen to Steven Spielberg; the battle of the eyeballs; and what Socrates had in common with Thomas Edison.
1
Why time feels less free
This is the mystery:
We have more hours at our disposal than any humans in history. Few of us toil for the six 12-hour shifts that constituted our grandfathers’ working week. Many of us also enjoy flexible employment arrangements. According to current estimates, lucky citizens of the developed world may enjoy around 1,000 months on this planet. The average man’s life expectancy is 80 and is increasing by six hours a day. Women’s rate of improvement lags behind slightly at four hours per day, but given that their average lifespan is 83, they can afford to take it slower.
Better yet, what we can do with our time transcends anything yet seen on earth. Our present has been transformed by astonishing powers of telepresence. Own a smartphone and you can operate in multiple time zones, see, learn or buy pretty much anything, interact with almost anyone, whenever you wish, with a swipe of a finger, without leaving bed. Never have we been able to accomplish so much, so fast, with so little effort.
Yet despite these everyday miracles, many of us feel time poor. Why?
The short answer is that we are living in a new sort of time, and it is creating a new sort of us. Our instinctive response is to speed up, but we would gain far more from these glorious freedoms if we slowed down and concentrated.
This is not always welcome news. ‘I am fed up with being told to be “in the moment”,’ said my friend, when she heard I was writing about time. ‘Please do something about it.’
I feel her pain. I associate this advice with a certain kind of lifestyle guru – the wealthy, ex-film star kind, who has never ironed a shirt without a stylist or a camera crew to immortalize this act of humility. But although this phrase sounds like twaddle from certain lips, it is harder to dismiss if you recognize it as the echo of wisdom that reverberates across continents and centuries.
‘What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached. Whatever quality is present you clearly