I just read a blog post about time management for lazy people.

By the time I was done, my head was spinning. It listed seventy-two things to do, and wisdom from three very smart and talented masters of time management.

It had photos of desks, rules on how to have phone calls, when to stand and when to sit.

And all so you, too, can be productive–or at least 30% more productive than people who don’t manage their time.

What does this say about our society and our world? What does this say about our values?

I think it says a few scary things:

1. It’s all about being productive. If you get things done it’s good. If you get less done, that’s not so good. (Last week I asked a fifteen year old student in my leadership program how his morning went. “Productive” he said. His morning involved skiing with a three year old. How can you be productive skiing with a three year old?)
2. If you can’t manage your time you aren’t trying hard enough, or haven’t practiced enough, or, even worse, you just don’t care. There’s some moral, ethical or personal failure here. Shame, shame on you, you unproductive, poorly managed people!
3. There’s a right way to live, to relate to time and to get things done. And that’s to manage, control, and structure everything. Forget about mystery. Forget about happiness. Forget about wonder and joy and adventure and the brilliant spark of creativity. It’s all about doing things the right way. It’s all about living a managed, controlled and structured life.

Ugh.

Over the past several months I’ve been getting deeply curious about time, and about how we move through time.

There are 600,000 google searches every month on the phrase “time management” and virtually every result comes up with a version of the same message: “If you just use my time-o-matic system, you’ll manage your time well, and manage to be productive, and manage to get the right/virtuous/meaningful things done!”

Never have I seen anything questioning the underlying metaphor of managing time.

And that’s where we run into trouble.

(more…)

I just read a blog post about time management for lazy people.

By the time I was done, my head was spinning. It listed seventy-two things to do, and wisdom from three very smart and talented masters of time management.

It had photos of desks, rules on how to have phone calls, when to stand and when to sit.

And all so you, too, can be productive–or at least 30% more productive than people who don’t manage their time.

What does this say about our society and our world? What does this say about our values?

I think it says a few scary things:

1. It’s all about being productive. If you get things done it’s good. If you get less done, that’s not so good. (Last week I asked a fifteen year old student in my leadership program how his morning went. “Productive” he said. His morning involved skiing with a three year old. How can you be productive skiing with a three year old?)
2. If you can’t manage your time you aren’t trying hard enough, or haven’t practiced enough, or, even worse, you just don’t care. There’s some moral, ethical or personal failure here. Shame, shame on you, you unproductive, poorly managed people!
3. There’s a right way to live, to relate to time and to get things done. And that’s to manage, control, and structure everything. Forget about mystery. Forget about happiness. Forget about wonder and joy and adventure and the brilliant spark of creativity. It’s all about doing things the right way. It’s all about living a managed, controlled and structured life.

Ugh.

Over the past several months I’ve been getting deeply curious about time, and about how we move through time.

There are 600,000 google searches every month on the phrase “time management” and virtually every result comes up with a version of the same message: “If you just use my time-o-matic system, you’ll manage your time well, and manage to be productive, and manage to get the right/virtuous/meaningful things done!”

Never have I seen anything questioning the underlying metaphor of managing time.

And that’s where we run into trouble.

(more…)