Taming the tyranny of time

Time, man. (Photo of Antelope Canyon by PatternPictures)

Throughout my life, I’ve struggled with my perception of time.

I am on board with the concept that time is fluid and nonlinear. I’ve had more trouble with the more basic idea that time is finite in practice.

I might glance at the clock at 6:03. Then I brush my teeth, gather a few things to put in my bag, and put on my shoes. Guess what! It isn’t 6:03 anymore. How is that possible???

Along the same lines, it’s been a revelation to me that large projects will take a measurable, definable amount of time, even if it’s difficult to measure or estimate at the start. Eventually, once enough time has been spent, the project will be complete. That still kind of blows my mind.

I was working on a knitting project recently, on a deadline, and ran into some trouble.

I had estimated that each row would take five to seven minutes. Therefore, by my calculation, I had about five or six hours left in the project. But that was only if everything was going well. I made a couple of mistakes that cost about two hours, and then slogged through a few more rows that were painfully slow due to a very fiddly stitch that I didn’t have a lot of experience with. I timed myself and it was taking me 15 to 20 minutes on each one!

I would never get the project done at this rate.

But then I realized that thought was fundamentally irrational. It may have seemed like it would take forever, but the number of rows was finite.

I could simply recalculate the estimated time required to knit the darn thing, based on the new average time per row. I could also add a some time for dealing with the inevitable mistakes.

Once I did this, I realized that I had about eight hours left (having covered a number of rows since my previous estimate).

And instead of hoping I would find the time, I decided to schedule those hours during convenient time blocks in my schedule.

I now had a much more realistic and doable plan that I knew I could follow through on, without stress or frustration.

Even if what I’m talking about here seems absurdly obvious to you, you probably encounter time-challenged individuals in your daily life — maybe even in your own family. I know I run into these difficulties with my students. They hesitate to even estimate how long things will take and are often reluctant to gather the necessary data.

In a way, they may prefer being in the dark, reinforcing their perception of time as something unknowable and unaccountable. But learning how long things take is critical for being able to be part of the world and get things done. As a person with a poor sense of time, I make constant use of stopwatches and timers (along with alarms and alerts) to get a handle on my daily schedule and assist me in planning.

Even though time will never be my strong suit, I am improving. I understand better how long things take and how to manage my projects, tasks, and appointments. Explicitly teaching these ideas to my students has helped me to understand these practices more fully — and hopefully I’m helping my students as well. It may take a little time.