Losing time

Thinking about the losses we regularly experience in everyday life one of the most salient is the loss of time, which actually shows two equally negative aspects: on the one hand, when a task cannot be accomplish with the smoothness we had initially anticipated we end up losing time either are an unavoidable repetition or as unexpected waits; the consequence of the lost time is that we are forced to choose between leaving the affected task unfinished or suffering a lack of time for the upcoming ones. Notably, the compounding of these two effects is indubitably mediated by the need to make the most out of every minute. As any engineer will be ready to tell you, margins are an essential tool to be able to accommodate the unexpected situations that are bound to happen sooner or later in a project without putting too much strain in the team. If the team is just you and the project is running your day without any gaps, over-straining becomes almost unavoidable.

It is appalling these days to browse through the job offers on the internet, because the level of preparation and experience expected from 20 and 30 year olds just does not add up: it would take sometimes 10 to 15 years of full-time employment to accumulate the working experience required for some entry-level jobs. This is particularly severe in IT-related jobs, but the increasing digitization of society means that these trend spills over to many other professional domains: architects have to be digital architects with intimate knowledge of their CAD tools; marketers need extensive experience in search engine optimization and digital communities and even doctors are required to have full command of the corresponding patient management systems.

Photo: Kristina

This inflationary trend in the demands of the employer resolves in a huge pressure for every potential employee to educate themselves as much as possible and the time this education requires can only be accommodated for by doubling activities: listening to a book while you exercise, reading the news during your bus commute, checking email at breakfast and so forth. But the duplication is never as efficient as performing both tasks separately and it can even come personally dangerous as prominently displayed by the alarmingly increasing figures on accidents linked to texting and driving.

The division of attention is, by no means, a recent problem. As I mentioned in a previous post, already in 1973 German author Michael Ende published the novel "Momo", where the inhabitants of the city were so focused in saving time that they did not have time to meet with friends or enjoy a cup of coffee, but one of the best examples of the effects of divided attention comes from Cuban singer and songwriter Silvio Rodriguez, who in 1971 composed the "Fable of the Three Brothers", where each of the protagonists "take it to the road to discover and enterprise" with different strategies: the first one, trying to avoid missteps was focusing on his steps, but after some time he was so crooked that he could not look up to his destination and never made it very far; the second one, trying not to lose his sense of direction kept his sight on his destination, but he was unaware of the obstacles in his path, stumbled over and over and never made it very far either; the little one, trying to avoid the mistakes of his siblings, kept one eye on his feet and one on the horizon, whereby he managed to make a lot of headway, but when it came to look at what he had achieved his eyesight had become so twisted that he could not contemplate it squarely. The whimsical aspect of this song is that, in spite of taking the form of a fable, where the third subject is supposed to succeed where the former two failed, there is no happy ending for the little one either, because the trick is actually to pivot, as Silvio sings, "between being and going".

As I mentioned before, the mindfulness movement has come to relevance as a reaction to the alienation that the constant bustle is producing in many people and it captures fairly well the teachings of the 50-year-old song: the point is not so much being constantly in the present, but instead choosing some moments along the day (there have to be enough of them) where the attention focuses solely on the current situation and disregards plans, consequences, deadlines and appointments to allow full appreciation of the task at hand. It is not only restful for our busy minds, but it also opens the field for new kinds of perception, for ideas to pop up that would otherwise have been buried under the torrent of activity.

Sadly, some people are just too busy trying to make ends meet to be able to afford this kind of pause. But if it is not your case, I honestly recommend it to anyone: far from being lost time it can turn out to be very inspiring and even become a cherished habit. I, for one, always try to savor one or two of these moments every day and I am very happy with my experience so far, trying to make the best out of my time, not just the most. Have a nice weekend.