My Time is Not Money

After a two-week trip to Indonesia that involved five plane rides, over 50 hours on buses, and a whole lot of waiting, it is perhaps not surprising that time is on my mind. The following is a reflection on time.

Spending time, spending money. Wasting money, wasting time. Eating into my time, eating into your money. Why are so many expressions interchangeable with time and money?

I feel icky when I think of my time in terms of money. I can’t help it — even determining an hourly rate feels a bit vulgar. As a freelancer, I know that it’s sometimes necessary and beneficial, and I have certainly done it. But it still feels bizarre.

We fixate so much on our strict measurements of time, asking “How long did it take you to finish?” or “How many hours did you waste?”, measuring out hours, minutes, seconds, and even nanoseconds. Can we all briefly pause and meditate on how arbitrary these measurements are? Sure, they are necessary for creating a standard. We need some way to coordinate trains, meetings, dinner dates and film screenings, after all. But I do believe it is crucial to sometimes take a step back and rethink our relationship to time.

May I propose a radical interpretation of time? (Okay, it’s radical to some, but completely normal to many).

Why not CREATE time, instead of filling it?

Rather than compose my own explanation for the above, I will elaborate on it with the impossibly eloquent words of Ryszard Kapuściński, the Polish journalist and writer. [Side note: Kapuściński's books are among my favorites in nonfiction, describing the world with an elegance that is addictive. I recommend him to you all, and now I am thinking of writing a blanket review of his work here.]

In The Shadow of the Sun, Kapuściński writes:

“The European and the African have an entirely different concept of time. In the European worldview, time exists outside man, exists objectively, and has measurable and linear characteristics. [...] The European feels himself to be time’s slave, dependent on it, subject to it. To exist and function, he must observe its ironclad, inviolate laws, its inflexible principles and rules. He must heed deadlines, dates, days, and hours. [...]

Africans apprehend time differently. For them, it is a much looser concept, more open, elastic, subjective. It is man who influences time, its shape, course, and rhythm [...] Time is even something that man can create outright, for time is made manifest through events, and whether an event takes place or not depends, after all, on man alone. [...]

Time appears as a result of our actions, and vanishes when we neglect or ignore it. It is something that springs to life under our influence, but falls into a state of hibernation, even nonexistence, if we do not direct our energy toward it. It is a subservient, passive essence, and, most importantly, one dependent on man.”

Yes, it was necessary to put such a long quote (I am biased toward his prose, anyway).

I have not lived in Africa, but after spending time in Costa Rica and living in Southeast Asia, I can say that Westerners are always impressed by the locals’ ability to wait. Coming from societies hell-bent on productivity, we wonder how we can develop this wondrous skill of waiting. Based on my own experience and Kapuściński’s descriptions, I believe that this waiting skill arises from a contrasting perspective on time. If nothing is happening, time is not passing, and we are therefore not wasting time. A radical notion indeed!

So, how do I “create” time?

At the end of October, I took a week-long road trip. I decided it would be a full vacation, which translates as, “I’m not bringing my laptop.” The trip was fantastic — we drove to Vientiane, Laos, then through northeastern Thailand. I checked my e-mail a few times during the week, but mostly to send out “I’ll be back on Monday” replies (I’ve yet to catch on to that whole auto-responder thing).

After a week filled with culinary delights, roads rimmed by endless rice paddies, and vast views of the Mekong river, I felt elated. I did not once think that I had been slacking off, or wasting time that could have been spent on “productive things.” Yet if I had sat at home for a week, trying to get work and writing done, but failing miserably, I would have felt completely unsatisfied. Why, then?

Because I chose to devote a week of my life to traveling along the Mekong. I created that week exactly how I wanted it, and that did not include getting work done. On the other hand, if I had intended to spend the week doing work and ultimately did not accomplish that, I would feel bad because I did not choose my time — I did not create it.

And what about those seemingly endless hours of transport on my Indonesia trip? I was able to handle those hours because they were between my wonderful travels  in Indonesia and the contentment of arriving home to absorb and process it all. They were between-ness — not time wasted.

Now, I’m all for using productivity techniques to help me get on track when I’m struggling to focus. But I refuse to enslave myself to the relentless hammering about making every minute “count” and being perpetually productive because time is money. For me, it’s not. What should matter in the end is that you are choosing and creating your time. How else can it be fulfilling?

And so I leave you to ponder your relationship to time. Please check out the following blog posts from Havi Brooks and Urban Panther, who offer great perspectives in this vein.

Havi at The Fluent Self:  “Extremely Unlikely Productivity Techniques”
Havi at The Fluent Self: “The Truth About Procrastination”
Urban Panther’s “All in Good Time”

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Tagged as: money, Thailand, time, travel