Ta eis heauton
I do not always use my time wisely. I am mildly embarrassed about this. Here are the things I do that feel unwise …
I go on Twitter too much.
I check email and messengers when I do not need to.
I mentally ruminate when I can delegate that rumination to these journaling sessions.
I am extra sensitive to using my time foolishly these days. My Twitter viewing is especially foolish. I do not even tweet anymore, so I am not going on to get social validation. I go on Twitter to watch culture develop (or degenerate) as entertainment, which I find more entertaining than any television show or movie.
I do not want to be entertained by culture. I want to create culture. Moreover, I have been doing so much embodiment work that my “empathetic” channels feel more open, and I can pick up on people's "vibes" even through tweets. Most people who tweet, especially in culture war mode, have so much unexamined shit to process emotionally. I do not have time to process their shit for them. I seem to pick up little culture war gremlins who distractingly nip on my ankles for hours after a Twitter excursion.
Practice is my answer to becoming less foolish. We are always practicing something, and these practices lead to our character. For example, my journaling practice trains my muscle of truthfulness, saying what I believe to be true, often putting me in touch with the spirit of truth. I believe this practice is making me less foolish.
What is my Twitter “practice” doing for me? It makes me impulsive, undisciplined, and less happy. I do think Twitter can be made into a practice that makes me and others less foolish. However, I need to practice it in a new way. What can I practice that encourages a wiser relationship with Twitter and all the other things related to not using my time wisely?
Since the throughline is time, what is my practice related to time? Time management. This practice is a legacy from when I was an employee in a 9 to 5 office job. It is not serving me anymore. Something about the pressure of time management leads to toxic productivity: you need to be efficient with your time, squeeze juice from every second, get things done, and “go above and beyond.”
The office culture promotes a work ethic of going above and beyond, and of course, “going beyond” is a moving target defined by the high performers and impossible for everyone to do, resulting in people pretending to do more work than what they need to do, aka “goldbricking.” The practice of time management promotes hyper-efficiency, or the pretense of such, resulting in this free-floating guilt of not doing enough.
The messed up thing is that when adopting this practice without wisdom, it does not shut off and bleeds through the office walls to every facet of life. This is what the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper meant by “total work,” a society-wide transformation where people are turned into workers and nothing more. This practice has to go. I do not need to “manage” my time anymore.
What practice can I consciously replace it with? I searched “using time wisely” and came across the following term: time stewardship. I looked up this term, which is a thing among Christian bloggers. From one website:
“Time stewardship is the careful, wise, and Godly use of the time God gives you. You need to accept the time given to you and decide what you will fill it with: something productive and Godly or something else, anything else. Quit making the usual excuses because they don't work.”
Yes. This is the practice that calls me. It is using time wisely, as God intended it. It seems like time management is a subset of time stewardship because sometimes it is wise to be timely and get things done. However, discernment is needed to know when to be timeless, and be with what is, allowing the peace of presence to have surprising transformative effects. This transformation is how culture is made.
I sense this practice will impart an “ontological code-switching” from the timely to the timeless, allowing one to be with reality as God intended. Time stewardship is what I will be practicing henceforth.
Comments are open to everyone. If you have any thoughts on how to steward time wisely, drop them in the comments.
I sense a slew of principles and micro practices will be needed to become artful with time stewardship. Here are the ones I am currently practicing or considering:
Dale Carnegie’s recommendation of living in “day-tight compartments.” Carnegie recommends this principle to live a worry-free life.
David Allen’s “Getting Things Done.” I view this practice as a martial art, and as David indicated in his last appearance at The Stoa, the basis of this practice is entirely spiritual.
Cal Newport’s “time blocking.” A simple practice of scheduling all your meetings or tasks you have planned for the day.
- ’s “timeboxing.” I have not tried this one, but it seems promising. This practice uses time blocking to track energy-creating and energy-draining activities.
Sahil’s “power down ritual.” A practice where you shut off from “having mode” (Fromm), plugging into “being mode.”
“Time integrity.” I am experimenting with this practice, and while simple, it feels effective. Have only a few practices with strict levels of time integrity, aka you do something when you said you would do it. Working out at a specific time works well for this.
“Screen fasting.” Another practice I am experimenting with. Like having an “eating window,” I have a “screen window,” where I only look at my screens during that time while screen fasting the rest of the day. On Saturday, I do not look at screens for the whole day, which adds thickness to the moment, making the day much more enjoyable. Screens have devilish ways to make one foolish with their relationship with time.
However, the “total work” ethos can co-opt all these practices. Something about getting good at ontological code-switching feels vital. Perhaps a daily ad hoc ritual must be created to state-shift between a timely and timeless ontology. 👋,
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