disclaimer: this is not a developed opinion; i'm just expressing a brainbug
we organize fuckin everything around time. this makes sense when we use time as a coordinator for inter-personal things, because time is Truly Objective (at slow enough speeds)
but its very common to organize oneself with time too. "today i will work on X for K hours" huh??? why hours? what relevance does hours have to anything?
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"because after K hours i will be tired/bored". then why not just ... work until you're tired/bored? plus, maybe after K hours you want to continue. "then i will continue" wait so then time wasn't really the relevant thing to start with
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"because i want to fit all of X, Y, Z in my day" wouldn't it make more sense to divy up your energy, then, instead of your time? split it approximately three-way and then when you're tired go to bed? also, if you go by time you risk being exhausted by the time you reach Z
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"by working for K hours on X every week i ensure progress" but progress is not a function of time. you can work 100 hours on something and make as much progress as having worked 1 hour from a different perspective. we're optimizing for the wrong thing here. if progress is what we care about, shouldn't we set a goal and reach towards it in increments of energy spent, instead of time? that's what actually is relevant
my hypothesis is that since time is the Great Coordinator it got used for business and then we just all ended up using it for everything else. (i have no idea if this is actually true tho)
it bothers me because i feel like focusing on time somehow, like, acts as a constant psychological tug away from whatever you're doing. hard to be in the moment if you keep looking at the clock. (conversely, the present is timeless)
and what's kinda scary, further, is tha ti cant even imagine trying to live without time
...I started writing, and then it was an hour later, and then I started formatting, and now it's 2 hours later, and I'm damn well gonna post it or I won't have anything to show for procrastinating on the task I was supposed to have gotten started on hours ago.
Also, this was originally a comment, but I decided my meanderings are difficult enough to read without being squeezed into a narrow div with less contrast.
just like cars and other motor vehicles should rightfully be considered specialist tools instead of something we demand everyone use in order to access society, the average person should never be required to consider time in their daily life.
Western society still copies (in various direct and indirect ways) the rigid bureaucratic methods of Roman imperial rule, and that included enforcement of a standard calendar and timekeeping method that was undoubtedly used for the periodic collection of money—the Roman plutocrats loved regular interest payments as much as any capitalist.
I do feel it all comes down to how much money can be made by enforcing timetables. it's also a handy method of punishment: tardiness is treated like it's a sin in Western culture.
~Chara
