Our relationship with time is complicated, to say the least. Like, take weekends as an example. Weekends fly by faster than bullets but Monday creeps on slower than a slug. Time becomes enemy #1 when you try to keep a healthy schedule. Want to get 8 hours of sleep? Spend quality time with friends and family? Work out? Have hobbies? Attend events? Good luck squeezing it all in. There's just never sufficient time for everything in a day. Right? Wrong!! That's what we have become trained to think. See, we've fallen into the trap of thinking we need to jam-pack every minute to get it all done. But, what if we tell you that to gain more time, all you need is a different approach?
In her thought-provoking book "Saving Time", author Jenny Odell offers this different approach. Rather than rushing into the typical time management hacks for hyper-productivity, Odell takes readers on a thoughtful exploration of how time has been perceived throughout history and examines interesting ideas from philosophy. Odell also shows how today's lifestyle has programmed us to live like we are in a Fast And Furious movie. By offering a deeper comprehension of time's rich realities, this insightful book aims to empower readers to reconsider their own mental frameworks. In doing so, we can potentially save time not by cramming more into each hour, but by learning to fully inhabit the present moment instead of feeling chained to the tyranny of the clock.
Our deep dive begins at the beginning, so jump in the time machine to see when humanity began clocking the minutes.
Summary
The nonstop busyness of modern life makes us crazed over saving time. But no life hack can manufacture meaning! Instead, collective action to fairly distribute time's resources (minimizing the effect of socioeconomic and other factors) and recognizing that our anxieties are communal is a better solution. And know this: time's not money to bank. It's moments to inhabit fully alive. When we relax racing the clock to soak up now, life feels less rushed. Less rushed, more enough.
The Creation Of Clock
Ever think about how weird it is that we all agree on what time it is? Cause time is such a weird concept, right? It's not even real! But we act like minutes and hours are the law. But it wasn't always this standardized - for most of human history people didn't even track exact hours. Back in the day stuff was way less scheduled. The rising and setting of the sun told a farmer when to sow and when...
Who Really Owns Our Time?
Ever wonder what your minutes and hours are really worth in cold hard cash? Most of us have never stopped to seriously consider the value we assign to our time. Is an hour of our free time worth the same as an hour of our work time? How much would it cost someone else to purchase an hour of our leisure? And who really "owns" our time - ourselves or others who demand it from us? We keep saying "time...
Time Management Is Not That Simple
Remember the concept of fungible time? About how everyone's got the same 24 hours in a day. That whole idea that time can be treated like money - spent, saved, wasted, invested - it's the foundation of all those modern time management tricks. Keep it in mind, cause we're gonna be picking at it in a moment. Now, imagine this scenario. John is a single guy with no kids. Obviously, it's easy for him to pull late nights getting work...
Rethinking Time in a Changing World
Time. It's one of the few constants in our lives that we can always rely on, right? The hours always pass at the same rate, days come and go, and years inevitably roll by one after another. Or do they? In our rapidly changing world, our perception and experience of time is shifting in some surprising ways that require us to re-examine how we think about that intangible fourth dimension.The philosopher Henri Bergson distinguished between how we think of time...
Stop Tracking Time!
Can you relate to that panicky sensation of time relentlessly marching on, no matter how desperately you long for it to slow down or reverse? The way we clutch at time management hacks or magic pills promising elongated lifespans shows that deep down, we yearn for more time. With our new perspective on time being flexible and self-determined, the question arises - can we achieve this? Can we 'get more time'?Here's the thing. All this clock-watching is gonna backfire. Haven't...
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About the Author
I am a writer and artist based in Oakland, California. My work generally involves acts of close observation, whether it's birdwatching, collecting screen shots, researching trash, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce. In general, I am searching for frameworks that allow us to perceive something new about everyday reality.
My first book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, was published in 2019, and my second book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, was published in 2023. You can see my other writing here.
My visual work has been exhibited at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, the New York Public Library, the Marjorie Barrick Museum (Las Vegas), Les Rencontres D'Arles, Fotomuseum Antwerpen, Fotomuseum Winterthur, La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), the Lishui Photography Festival (China), and apexart (NY). I have been an artist in residence at Recology SF (the dump), the San Francisco Planning Department, the Internet Archive, and the Montalvo Arts Center. From 2013 to 2021, I taught digital art at Stanford University.
More on: https://www.jennyodell.com
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