What If Instead of Trying to Manage Your Time, You Set It Free?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/15/magazine/jenny-odell-interview.html

by bookofjoe • 3 years ago

44 23 3 years ago

bookofjoe• 3 years ago

sidfthec• 3 years ago

I can't help but think that the author of the book as an artist, who I assume is not in a 9-5 job and whose work necessarily requires unusual uses of their time, can't possibly relate to normal folks here.

Every day I need to: 1. work out. 2. work at least 9-5. 3. cook dinner. 4. spend time with my wife.

Then, things come up. Shopping, chores, etc.

Already I don't have time to waste, and I don't even have kids or a second job. So yeah, I block out my day: Wake up at 6, breakfast and out the door by 6:45, commute and work out and shower and get to my desk by 8:30, etc etc. If I didn't purposely block out time like this I'd wake up at 10am, have to work late, cook late, spend less time with family, not keep up with my health, etc, etc.

tayo42• 3 years ago

This is why working remote /from home was probably the best thing to happen to me. So liberating to gain those hour's back stolen by commuting and organizing a life around being somewhere else all day

thelogicguy• 3 years ago

I don't necessarily disagree, but I think there's another way of seeing this here that goes: if some of your time is already accounted for by certain tasks, trying to regiment them out further ends up reinforcing the idea that you're losing time constantly. Scheduling out personal time in the same manner as working time pushes you to think about them in relative terms.

As a disclaimer, this is something I go back and forth on and I do tend to use time blocking myself because otherwise I find it hard to maintain direction over long periods of time.

brokenbot• 3 years ago

I think part of the view on an authors/artists work schedule is naive and idealistic. But often times they are really just normal folks with mostly standard schedules.

I've known of few artist and one author, they all pretty much worked 9 to 5 with some small variation, but not much. Generally those types of jobs have the same flexibility as working from home, but also require more motivation, discipline, and time management to get works (book, commissioned art) out on time. I believe she alludes to this in her comment about being that person who keeps a log and tracks time and that its important within the context.

When I started working from home full time about 6 years ago, I relied on them to help me not get distracted and get my work done on time. I struggled at first because I model my time on freedom, the idealist view of artist in my mind. I didn't work well, time slipped away, then I adopted a standard schedule and was back on track. I also learned getting dressed like you're going to work helps a ton.

As for you schedule, its the word `need` that I would question. Do you `need` to do those things, or do you get meaning from them and so you make sure they done and the time for them becomes priority.

I realize a job is essential in some very real ways, but use of need is similar to management in the sense that people need to manage there time to get more out of it and should focus on time efficiency. Which to me seems like they point she is making.

Throw73849• 3 years ago

historical relationship between workers and bosses and who is in charge of whose time.

I have 4 bosses, they all fully own my time and schedule. It is all about managing expectations, there is no such thing as 10x or even 4x developer :)

bluefirebrand• 3 years ago

I think most developers are lucky to make it to 1/2X most days.

I certainly feel that way, even though I do think I'm pretty good at this job.

I have 10 hours of meetings a week and they feel perfect sprinkled throughout my calendar to ensure I never get enough time to sit and think about my work.

908B64B197• 3 years ago

I have 4 bosses

No.

At this point consider contracting.

javier_e06• 3 years ago

"...realizing that I am also changing and evolving. To me those are the reminders that, yeah, I’m alive, today is not the same as yesterday, I will be different in the future, therefore I have a reason to live, which is to find out what that change is going to be. " Could not agree more. Time is change.

shreyshnaccount• 3 years ago

yeah, and change is time. there is no notion of change without time, and Id argue that there's no way to measuring time without change, so change is indeed just a different manifestatin of time

tqi3• 3 years ago

You know, I remember meeting someone at a conference once. Within maybe 10 minutes of meeting, he showed me this terrifying — to him it was probably wonderful — spreadsheet of how he accounted for every hour of the day for the last couple of years... I don’t know if he secretly feels punished by his own system or if he feels empowered by it. There’s not really any way for me to know... I think that person has the potential to use that way of thinking very self-punitively.

As a society we seem to lack the ability to say "this is not for me" without passing judgement on people for who it is. I think it's great that the person being interviewed has a point of view, but I also think there are few things more personal than how one manages their time, so to make a value judgement so casually feels deeply un-empathetic.

giraffe_lady• 3 years ago

I think that quote shows a fair bit of the uncertainty and curiosity about the experience of being a different person that is a core part of empathy. They are offering some conjectures and sharing concerns about what that experience could be like, but not actually passing judgement in that passage.

tqi3• 3 years ago

Definitely agree that uncertainty and curiosity are key components of empathy. I realize that my reaction is probably informed by a part of the question that I didn't include in my quote: ... there’s also a type of person, whom you write about in the book — you call them “productivity bros” — who seems to want to micromanage time and thinks about it in terms of return on investment.

I think people tend to use "[BLANK] bros" derisively.

staleStatefile• 3 years ago

You know for any other observer it would not be unreasonable language that you’re just being a casual critic of the quote you pasted.

“Deeply un-empathic” could be seen as a casual ad hominem about the speakers state of mind.

I don’t care or think you’re being that; I get your point without thinking you’re casually critical.

I just don’t think your point is any more interesting or nuanced. It’s very same-y. As if you translated what you read rather than expressed a novel emotional context.

geocrasher• 3 years ago

I've often wondered what alternative schedules could do for somebody's time management. For example, instead of 24 x 60 minute hours, how about 32 x 45m hours? Of course your actual time spent won't change much. Instead of 8 hours sleep you get 10.6, etc. But how would it change how we perceive time? Seems like it would be an interesting experiment.

svilen_dobrev• 3 years ago

hours.. minutes.. are recent human-invented items. Mostly to sync / communicate to other humans. Some tribes do not have those (can't find quote, but they represented time with location-someone-has-been-then ).

The Days are the actual real thing.

so within a day-night, the split into sub-parts can be rather arbitrary. Maybe not even same-length parts.. Whatever suits you.

IMO the experiment would be very interesting and soul-freeing, although very tricky .. to avoid / escape everybody-else-imposing-back-that-hourly-stuff..

ianmcgowan• 3 years ago

Sounds like the French Revolutionary Calendar [1] or Soviet Calendar [2], both of which were reportedly quite unpopular. It will be interesting if a 4-day work week catches on - will everyone get Friday off, or will 20% of the workforce get a random day during the week?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_calendar

namaria• 3 years ago

will 20% of the workforce get a random day during the week?

That's not equivalent to everyone getting a Friday off. That's 20% of 20%...

fuzzfactor• 3 years ago

The idea of "harnessing" your time or energy is mainly just a completely different attitude to "unleashing" them.

Done right, you get a lot more done in the same amount of time pursuing the latter.

Especially if you're going to spend the time anyway.

spokeonawheel• 3 years ago

setting my time free would mean that he door is open for everyone to bother me

What If Instead of Trying to Manage Your Time, You Set It Free?

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