I have been unemployed for 73 days and during this interval have been asked what on Earth I spend my time doing by at least one person, on average, about once a day. Compared to their own lives, most of everyone rightly feel that I am astonishingly time-rich and surely must have achieved something with all this wealth. How am I not immensely bored? I am reassured that they, surely, would be.
Alas.
Time is money so tracking how it is being spent can yield useful insights. For the past 3 years I have tracked my expenses purchase-by-purchase with a precision of two decimal points. The result has been a stark insight into exactly how much I require to live at precisely what sort of standard of living (in Dublin, Seattle or London) as well as some pretty good ideas for how to manage myself financially. For instance, I discovered that (up to a certain threshold) getting rid of belongings actually increases my disposable income by a good few hundred pounds a year and gives me at least 5 extra hours of leisure weekly.
For the past two months I have done the same tracking with time. Here is what I concluded.
First, that everything takes a lot longer than you imagine. However long you think something will take, it probably takes four times longer. The average book takes 7 hours spread over two weeks. Reading The Economist takes 9. An hour-long lunch with a friend in London actually takes four: two hours of travel, one hour at the actual rendezvous and one hour to shower, get ready, get distracted by someone completely different sending you a cat video and so on. While the fixed cost of social encounters tends to stay predictably at around three hours, any time alcohol is consumed the time spent in actual company will pretty much double. A good idea here is to schedule in advance hard deadlines for ending drinking sessions.
Second, we spend a ludicrous amount of time on, essentially, crap. Doing laundry, booking tickets to comedy shows, cooking, looking up things to do, shopping, commuting, washing dishes, looking after pets and plants and gardens, making sense of bills, paying them, running petty errands, arguing with people in call centers, planning holidays, planning parties, planning dates, planning work, reporting to others about the plans, more shopping, more laundry, more food preparation and so on. It takes me almost half an hour daily just to clean my teeth (I floss). About a third of every day is spent on nonsense - the sort of stuff rich people delegate to underlings. Next time you gush over how much Elon "Iron Man" Musk gets done in a day, remember he never has to spend an hour on the phone explaining to someone in Newcastle his precise employment situation.
Third, we are under permanent siege from things wanting our attention. Here is the unrelenting flow of news, over there some video or article or book or author your friend really really wants you to have a look at, next to them marketing and spam in every communication channel, on top the unbroken nagging of errands at every step and above all that constant voice: 'I should look into this'. And that's not counting any kind of cat videos. If your mind is a house then the world is a permanent flood pushing in an interminable quantity of debris and sweeping away everything that was there beforehand.
Take care.
Even in a state of unemployment it is possible to spend your entire time doing what eventually feels like nothing whatever. I have averaged only about four and a half hours of proper study daily and I'm counting certain YouTube channels in this.
This is not a complaint, really, just a simple observation. We all contribute to the noise. I certainly do (this post included). But it is important to remember we need time for introspection.
I don't just mean an hour in the evening while you struggle to fall asleep. I mean hours and hours of long walks thinking very hard and in a way that is systematic about what is going on with the world. Time set aside for contemplation; for appreciating the glory of a late Summer's day; for digesting everything that has happened to you (sometimes years and years ago); for trying to distinguish how to deal with other people and what is important, what is worth pursuing, how to achieve your dreams and what those dreams are. You need an immense amount of time for all this.
It is only when you take this time that you realise how remorseless a deluge washes away unceasingly the precious time you have on this planet. As I write this, my phone has been making sounds in the next room almost without interruption. Ping ping ping. People and institutions sending terabytes of information at me and demanding attention. Even when you are not asked to do anything, you are asked for time - to open your mind to intelligence and data and opinion. This will besiege and crowd your own reflections out of existence. Insomnia and an inability to focus is how my mind likes to take revenge.
You must notice the constant harassment. Take a lot of care what information you allow to enter your mind. Be very conservative upon which things you bestow your attention. Don't let the world and its agenda trample over your own thoughts if you expect any of them to blossom.
