We all understand, rationally anyway, that time never stands still, it moves in only one direction, it is not owned by anyone and it is impossible to get more out of it. Yet who among us hasn’t wanted to manage it better, squeeze more of it, or take it away from others and have it under our own control? In her most recent book, Time Saver, Jenny Odell, visual artist and bestselling author of How to Do Nothing: Resist the Attention Economy, argues that standard ways of thinking about time, particularly in regarding work and what time is owed and to whom—can obscure potentially more humane and expansive, less self-centered notions of time, views that go beyond restrictive notions of efficiency or work-life balance . “I’m really trying to work against an instrumental view of time,” says Odell, 37, “where it’s something that will help you or hurt you.”
Much of his book discusses the historical relationship between workers and bosses and who is in charge of whose time. But on a slightly more individual, personal level, I think we’ve all had jobs where we felt like our employers believed they owned our time. I’m curious as to what you think we really owe our jobs to, time wise. It depends on the job. I’m thinking about the part of Emily Guendelsberger’s book where he talks about the phrase ”time to bow, time to clean”. He described working at an ice cream parlor and had a very different idea of what was due than his boss. ”Time to bow, time to clean” is what a boss would say. It is as if you are physically present, you should be creating work for yourself. That’s compared to someone in your position who is thinking, I signed up to do the tasks that need to be done at a certain time. That’s much more finite than “time to bow, time to clean,” which is like, if you’re here, you must be performing the image of the job at all times, even making up nonsensical tasks. There’s a distinction between signing up to get work done and signing up to have every second micromanaged.
From “Time Saver” by Jenny Odell. Chronometer and Motion Study by Frank Gilbreth, who with his wife, Lillian, examined labor movements in the 1910s.
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Collection, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
This is not directly related to work, but there is also a type of person you write about in the book: you call them “productivity brothers” — who seems to want to micromanage time and thinks of it in terms of return on investment. You’re skeptical that some kind of time management mindset can lead to a more substantive relationship with time, and you even think it can distract people from bigger questions about what we do with our time. I also believe that people who focus on time management in their lives often confuse planning with purpose. But who is to say that someone cannot or will not find satisfaction in treating time as something from which they can make better profits? You know, I remember meeting someone at a conference once. Maybe 10 minutes into the meeting, he showed me this scary, to him probably wonderful, spreadsheet of how he counted every hour of the day for the past two years. It’s probably not even as unusual as we might think, but there was a score at the end based on whether he had spent enough hours doing the different categories of things he wanted to do. I don’t know if he secretly feels punished by his own system or if he feels empowered by it. There’s really no way for me to know. My skepticism has more to do with that rhetoric and mindset that time is offered as a solution to someone who is not in control of their time: that if they controlled their time in this gridded fashion, they could be successful in life. I think that person has the potential to use that way of thinking in a very self-punitive way.
I hate asking something as silly as “Are there two kinds of people in the world?” question, but unfortunately, do you think that there are just some people who need to view their time in an efficiency-maximizing, instrumental way and other people who are willingly rejecting that and are looking for deeper ways of thinking about our time here at the Land? I think we are all potentially both people. I’ve been the spreadsheet person before. I wrote a book; I was on a schedule. It did not have a sheet music attached, but it did have a record of work. If you’re trying to reach a goal, you may need to time your wait. Also, in a broader sense, I don’t know if you’ve ever read “Sophie’s World.”
Yeah, by Jostein Gaarder. Right, so there’s a phrase in there: “In the rabbit’s skin.” When you’re in the rabbit’s skin, you don’t have much perspective on things. It’s like being in the bush. Sometimes I’m there, other times I’m not, and I almost think of myself as two different people depending on where I am, which is why I thought of that when you said “two different kinds of people.” In recent years, I sometimes literally write a letter to myself if I know I’m about to step into the rabbit’s skin. I’ll say, “Hey, I know you’re there, and I’m here to remind you that things look different from where I am now, and they’ll look different again in the future when you come back.” of rabbit fur.” I have come to accept that I am both people and I have to be both at different times.
Odell in his studio in 2016.
Google
It’s amazing how we can change our experience of time by choosing to think about it differently. Let me give you my own example: sometimes I’m sitting on a bench bored while my kids are on the playground, and I feel like time is passing slowly. But if I stop and think, this is not my time, it is his time, then the boredom vanishes, and time begins to feel precious. I wonder if you think the experience is related to the idea in your book that if we can take a less self-centered view of time, then the possibilities for how we experience time can be much greater and feel much more complete. I think so. An individualistic understanding of time goes very quickly in the direction of meaninglessness for me. I remember there was a post on Reddit from someone who was talking about trying to outsource everything in his life and making it super efficient. I think they were asking for advice on “What else should I do?” and someone in the comments said, “You’re not going to have any meaning in your life very soon if you’re not careful.” Because even if you get better at protecting your time, that doesn’t answer the question of what you want to use your time for and what your values are. There’s also this irony where, in situations in the past, I felt like I needed to protect my time more so I could do the things I wanted, and it obscured the fact that what I wanted was a sense of connection and meaning, and to get that I would have to do something similar to give away my time. Since you mentioned kids: A couple of weeks ago, I was hanging out with a friend who has a 3-year-old son, and it took us a half hour to walk two blocks. There’s a way that, as you were saying, you could see that experience as potentially boring, but you could also see that the reason we were walking slowly is because children look at things in a strange way. It’s a way I appreciate trying to imagine. Because of the time spent like this, the whole question of “What are you getting out of this?” it would be absurd.
This is related to something I asked you earlier, but you said that the view of time management and ROI goes in the direction of meaninglessness. I want to know more about why you think that. For me, there is the question of why you do something. That can lead into difficult territory like, What do you want your life to be? Ideally, your answers to that question are what guide your decisions about how to spend your time. You’d expect to spend less time on things you don’t want to do so you can do things you’ve decided are meaningful to you, and I think there’s something about that culture of making everything more efficient that risks avoiding the question of why. A life of total efficiency and comfort? Good, because? What would be left if you made everything super convenient? It’s helpful to make certain things more efficient, but that can become its own end, taking focus away from the larger question of why.
Do you have any advice on how people might answer that question for themselves? Like, what is the meaning of life?
Yeah. The closest thing I have to an answer is that I want to be in contact with things, people, contexts that make me feel alive. I have a specific definition of alive, which is that I want to feel like I’m being changed. Someone who is completely habitual, fixed in his ways of thinking and doing, that type of person is prone to seeing the days on a calendar as pieces of material that he uses to achieve his goals. There are all kinds of degrees between that and someone who is so completely open to each moment that they’re dysfunctional or something, but I want to live closer to that second pole. I think of things that encourage me, and they are usually meetings, conversations, that “My dinner with Andre” kind of conversation where you and your conversation partner change at the end, you’ve covered new ground, you’re both somewhere else now. But they are also encounters with non-human life that is growing and changing, and the realization that I too am changing and evolving. For me, those are the reminders that, yes, I am 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 discover what this change is due to. be.
That’s a pretty good immediate response to “tell me the meaning of life.” [Laughs.] Well, that’s what’s working for now.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.
David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and writes the Talk column. He recently interviewed Emma Chamberlain on leaving YouTube, Walter Mosley on a dumber America and Cal Newport on a new way of working.
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