IS was when I attended to a yoga class at 5.30 am (before sunrise!) and then in the same afternoon I moderated a conference in Florence, with a round trip by train from Milan, that the alarm bell rang. At that point I wondered how far a day could be extended, my day, and why I considered it a container in which to put a series of commitments until the evening, sometimes even non-priority ones. Before embarking on another marathon the next day.
We never have time!
These considerations arose after having “discovered” that the duration of our existence is limited: it’s just four thousand weeks if we live to eighty. A number that becomes scandalously meager and even more residual if we think about how much time we waste in useless activities. Or that we don’t care.
To explain our cosmic insignificance: an oak can withstand up to five hundred years, and a Greenland shark becomes mature at one hundred and fifty. For example, today I have reached 2,808 weeks of life. I feel anxious, to be honest. Calculate your weeks and you will feel the same, at least I think (I’m 52 in a year). We have a deadline, but let’s pretend we don’t think about it. We delude ourselves that we have time, yet it slips away.
Why do we need 48 hour days?
Let’s think about it: we are talking about an abstract concept after all that we cannot create, set aside or save to use another day, it burns out now as we live it. And, then, Fr.why do we just repeat that we need 48-hour days? Why do we run, out of breath, after a thousand commitments without stopping to reflect on this moment and on what we really want? It’s late, it’s late! The British journalist Oliver Burkeman, author of the book, wondered How to get more time (Vallardi) became a bestseller according to New York Times.
Burkeman, columnist of the The Guardian, he was exasperated by the tyranny of the hands and the usual mantra “I’ll finish everything by tonight”, between overflowing e-mail boxes and children to follow. So one day he took some time for himself and went to sit on a bench in Central Park (he lives between London and New York). There, a bit like Buddha, he had an enlightenment. And he understood that the more he tried to manage time with every possible technique, the more new commitments entered between frustration and fatigue (the most famous technique is the “tomato” technique which divides the day into intervals with a timer).
It’s late, it’s late!
Moral: he has drawn up a decalogue where, in addition to the advice to draw up two to-do lists – one realistic and the other utopian – suggests above all to recover the idleness. Raise your hand if you have had – and have given themselves – the opportunity to practice it in recent times. Nobody, in fact. We are all like White rabbit who in Alice in Wonderland always shouts: “It’s late, it’s late”.
“We pride ourselves on being multitasking and productive,” Burkeman explains. “Apps eliminate waiting, allowing us to hail a taxi or order pizzas simply by calling the phone. Entire business models are based on the number of seconds a user waits to see a page loaded on the web, for example, but if we think about it, they do nothing but freeing up space for new commitments where we continually want to demonstrate how efficient and organized we are ».
Projected into the future
The truth is that we live permanently projected into an imagined future. «That day, on the bench, I realized that I would never be able to completely eliminate my“ to-do-list ”because it would have self-replicated without stopping. Using time well means controlling it less and living it more. Today I just condense my creative projects into three hours a day and then keep options open where, first of all, I am. Above all, I have “unsaddled” the technologies ».
This is exactly the point: how do we want to spend our time? Do we want to live on a conveyor belt day after day or make sense of the days?
We are the time
“We are all pigeonholed into a social role as mothers, wives and workers and most of the time we define ourselves through our commitments, the “I have to do this or that“” Explains the time coach Flora Andreoli. «It is no coincidence that my clients are managers or parents with a full agenda and a mania for control. What if, instead, we reflect on our identity and ask ourselves if we are truly happy? They often answer me: “Eh maybe I could choose”. Not only is there always an alternative, but if you do a little introspection you also discover that there are dozens of other possibilities. We just don’t want to see them so as not to leave our comfort zone ».
Escape from yourself
In the meantime, however, time never comes back, to use the title of a piece by Fiorella Mannoia. According to the psychologist and writer Selene Calloni Williams, founder of shamanic yoga e fresh author of Daimon (Piemme), the question is all too spiritual, as well as cultural: we are all on the run from the feminine, that is, from the soul. “In our patricentric society we prefer to run away from ourselves rather than identify our mission. After all, it is much easier to remain in the superficiality of things with a thousand commitments than to “recognize yourself”. And, then, we also “hide” by following TV series every night. But if you are busy how do you live emotions? ».
To have time you have to be and not to do
To be and not to do, therefore. On the labor management front, however, perhaps something is changing: “With smart working, the concept of”work-life balance ”has become a not inconsiderable issue in companies. It has been understood that organizational well-being cannot be separated from that of individuals »explains Maria Zifaro, associate of Business Organization at the Universitas Mercatorum in Rome. «The approach to performance has changed: we no longer speak of control, but of coordination. This is demonstrated by the phenomenon of “south working”: thousands of people have decided to go home to the south and experience other professional rhythms. Result: the work is carried out the same, but reshaped ».
For Burkeman, the secret may be to surrender to what i Germans call Eigenzeiteverything in its time. Living without the obsession of having to do everything or mortgage the future. And in fact I volunteered to participate (also) in a stage of Giro-E 2022 of e-bikes with the iO Donna women’s team. For now I’m happy about it. Then if I reach the finish line it’s another matter …
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