Time management, productivity, and the commodification of your life

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an irrational fear about the passing of time. 

Not having enough time, not making the most of it, time going too quickly. I constantly feel the sand falling and hear the clock ticking, reminding me of the constant, unstoppable passage of time. The existence of a kid genius out there, doing more than I could ever imagine. Comparing my successes with others my age, gauging where I stand in this imaginary social hierarchy of productivity and success. I can’t spend a day doing nothing without loud complaints from my inner voice. 

What started as a way to soothe my inner droning, an innocent interest in productivity and time management, managed to creep its way into every corner of my life. I get distressed if miss my alarm or sleep in, even by an hour, even on weekends. I watch videos in 2x playback (whilst browsing the comments for that extra nugget of information, of course). I speed-read books, blogs, articles. I walk quickly, dodging slow, meandering walkers, muttering with frustration. 

I write fast, my thoughts going quicker than my fingers, taking speed-typing courses to produce more in less time. I eat 2 min microwaveable porridge oats, that taste like cardboard, for that sweet, sweet savings of a few minutes of my life. I take humans' inability to multitask as a personal slight, and then I go ahead and multitask anyway, convincing myself that actually, I can listen to podcasts whilst reading and remember what I’ve learnt. 

Weirdly, despite all this, I’m not the kind of person where life passes by in a flash. Life goes slowly for me. I’m in my 20s, but I feel like I’ve been alive for 40-odd years. I get confused when people tell me how young I am, how naive I am, when I’ve spent years upon years speed-running life, trying to get the most out of every possible second. 

And then recently I realised, all of this, for what? 

If I get to my desk an hour early, I don’t leave an hour earlier. When I finish my work early, I don’t relax, I simply get started on tomorrow's task. And at the end of the month when I’ve got no client work left due to my excellent time management skills? I hop on the internet, looking for my next client, the next course, the next book to make me even more productive. 

What am I saving this time for and why, more importantly, am I so obsessed with it? 

Time management and its chokehold on the self-help community. 

We all want to do more with less. We think we can do this by allotting our time in a way that maximises our existence. This is why time management is one of the most popular topics in the world of self-help, spread across books, articles, LinkedIn, and YouTube–basically anywhere you can consume content, you can learn how to be more productive. 

I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent watching Abi Abdaal, Thomas Frank, StudyQuill, TED Talks, Matt D’Avella and whoever else giving me advice on how to manage my time, how to manage time more effectively, how to work smarter not harder, time management for busy but lazy people, the philosophy for time management, tips for effective time management, why I’m so bad at managing my time, how to gain control of my free time and so on, so on, so on. 

And if my lack of ability to physically create more time wasn’t frustrating enough, it turns out my obsession with time management is actually slowly killing me. Time management “​​doesn't make you thrifty and efficient. It makes you physically stressed in a way that could damage your health”. Great. 

When it comes to why we want to manage our time so badly it stems from, like most things, capitalism. It originates in exploitation, control of lower-class people’s time, and the need to get workers to do whatever the capitalist wants them to do so the capitalists can make more money.  

Your boss wants you to be as productive as possible, to make the most money possible. We have programmed ourselves to hold this belief, too. How many of us have been told that unless you work hard, stay late, or go that extra mile, you won’t get that promotion because you weren’t dedicated enough?

I believe the biggest myth perpetuated by this kind of content is that we own our time and that our time is entirely within our control. I’ve seen countless motivational posts basically saying the reason you aren’t doing something is that it’s not a priority for you, not because you don’t have the time. The problem with this is that time isn’t a commodity. We don’t own our time in the same way. Most people don’t own their time, they portion it out to things they have to find important because they need to make money (to live). Even for those of us who enjoy our job, is it always want we want to be doing at that exact moment? (No!) 

This also completely ignores the fact that people have children, dependents, people they have to care for, responsibilities, and chores. I don’t clean my bathroom because I want to, I do it because have to. 

In the endless well of productivity advice, I’ve come across in my life as a freelancer, some of it is, essentially, to become a big capitalist boss. We have been made to think our moments are the elements of profit. As your time is a commodity which you have full ownership of, you should delegate tasks you don’t want to do to others because you're more valuable than them. It’s actually a great idea to pay someone in the Philippines £5 an hour to do a job you don’t want to do, because that’s so much money for them! Because of your high value, you need to be effective as possible and use your time to create surplus value to make maximum profit. Business owners shouldn’t do admin, data entry, cook their own food, or clean their house because it’s not productive. 

What's the effing point? 

Our obsession with time management and productivity has been normalised, the endless pressure to “capture” and “utilise” our time to make the most out of it. The thing I noticed is, none of this advice is given to help us live a pleasant life. Instead, it’s to help us do more work, make more money, and then…what? What do I do once I have lived a highly productive life, made my money, and left no time for anything else? 

However much I try, I can’t create more time. As Oliver Burkeman says in his book Four Thousand Weeks (titled after the average human lifespan)  “You have to accept that there will always be too much to do; that you can’t avoid tough choices or make the world run at your preferred speed; that no experience, least of all close relationships with other human beings, can ever be guaranteed in advance to turn out painlessly and well—and that from a cosmic viewpoint, when it’s all over, it won’t have counted for very much anyway”.

Time is not a product, it is not a commodity, and neither are we. We are human, we have inner cycles, seasons, energetic points, and low points. Although organising your day can be beneficial, it’s easy to take it way too far. Historically (and scientifically) we’ve seen you might actually get more meaningful work done if you take long lunches, leisurely walks and midday naps. Plus, this will make you a LOT happier than the alternative. 

Time is supposed to be cherished, not managed. The next time I finish my work early, I will still be busy–busy resting.

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Inspiration and resources:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54785515-four-thousand-weeks 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29502354-rest 

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/85465206-four-thousand-weeks-time-management-for-mortals?page=2 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDLZsc1LkkQ  

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/your-obsession-with-time-management-is-slowly-killing-you-science-says.html   

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/let-your-employees-nap-already.html