How to use time well
I'm re-reading a favourite book and this passage feels so relevant for our era of rush and grind and burnout.
"The evolution of how we've thought about time is covered in fascinating detail in Celeste Headlee's 2020 book, 'Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving'. . .
"Prior to the Industrial Age, most people worked to complete specific tasks: bring in the harvest, put up the barn, stitch a quilt" writes Headlee. When these tasks were complete, so was the day's work . . .
But the Industrial Revolution and advent of factory jobs caused a huge shift in the way paid laborers were compensated - which is to say, earnings began to be determined not by their accomplishments but by the time they spent 'at work'. It was the difference, in other words, between a cobbler being paid to repair a shoe (a project that has a defined endpoint and a clear way to measure success) and a factory worker being compensated by the hour for performing tasks that theoretically could be repeated indefinitely. The latter creates financial incentives for people to keep working for as long as they can bear it, in order to earn more money . . .
"The transformation this idea caused in the world at large cannot be overstated" writes Headlee. "When time is money, idle hours are a waste of money. This is the philosophical underpinning of all our modern stress: that time is too valuable to waste."
(From The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again by science writer, Catherine Price).
Powerful stuff hey.
And it gets me thinking -
Time IS valuable, not because it's money but cos we're all going to die (memento mori). So what's the most valuable thing to spend that time on? How can we live in alignment with what matters to us, not just blindly adopt the values of late-stage capitalism?
In Deep Work, Cal Newport talks about a similar idea to that above - of focusing on and finishing substantive work projects, rather than wasting time on 'network tools' like email or social media. And way back in the day, Karl Marx talked about the alienation of labour, and how becoming a cog in a machine (eg the guy that puts the laces on the shoes, over and over) is far less rewarding than being a cobbler that makes a whole shoe and sells it to the customer, end to end. Maybe we need to bring that deep joy and connection to work, back in.
Productivity hacks treat the symptom, not the underlying cause. Oliver Burkeman explains this so well in '4000 weeks: Time and how to use it'. To wildly paraphrase: your to-do list will never be done. So put some stuff on there, at the very top, that makes you feel alive. Then go do it.
