I am baffled by the nature of time in a
contemporary commercial urban society. There are two aphorisms that
accurately reflect the world of time around me:
'Give a busy man the job, to get something done' and
'Work expands to fill the time available'.
So how do these two statements fit together, they seem contradictory?
I
think the answer is that we have a metronome and a scheduling algorithm
built into our mind. We live our life at a particular beat, set by the
general expectations of our life: we range from a 60 hour work week,
two teen age kids and a spouse with a rapid time beat on one extreme to
a single person in a retirement village at a slow beat on the other
extreme. Those are the ranges of our metronome.
The metronome sets a key variable in the scheduling
algorithm. Once that key variable is set, the scheduling algorithm
arrays all of our responsibilities in a line; the line prescribing our
minute-by-minute functions is organized to solve the problem of
allocating our attention to details, tactics and strategies that
accomplish our goals. The algorithm drives us and fulfills our needs.
Does that answer my question?
Yes, it does for me. Beat and pace are what time is about. Beat is set by the nature of our daily life and pace is the algorithm we use to get everything done. Get the right mixture and all power is in our hands.