We need to understand when we need to go slow
September 30, 2024 1:05 AM Subscribe
We also regard time as a kind of commodity, as if it’s fungible, as if 10 blocks of 10 minutes is the same as one chunk of 100 minutes. In human terms, this is absolutely not true. “The mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day.” That’s Charles Dickens. In other words, if you try and break up your day into lots of little chunks of time, your productivity is massively destroyed even though the time available is pretty much notionally the same. from Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent? [The Behavioral Scientist]
One of the worst mistakes we ever made was making email instantaneous. We should have built in a two-hour buffer
schedule send.
posted by HearHere at 3:49 AM on September 30 [6 favorites]
schedule send.
posted by HearHere at 3:49 AM on September 30 [6 favorites]
You have to USE things like schedule send though.
This resonates with me deeply for creativity. One needs FLOW, and it's fantastic for everything in life. Did you read for 10 minutes or you couldn't put that book down? Did you chat with a friend or did you hang out for hours laughing at some dumb TV? Did you write a line of that short story and run off or did you stare out the window thinking about birds for about hour and without realizing it, slowed your breathing and blood pressure?
I know the focus here is on one of least favorite words, "productivity." But in my eyes, life is not meant to be productive, and I find it often to be a foolish goal.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:59 AM on September 30 [20 favorites]
This resonates with me deeply for creativity. One needs FLOW, and it's fantastic for everything in life. Did you read for 10 minutes or you couldn't put that book down? Did you chat with a friend or did you hang out for hours laughing at some dumb TV? Did you write a line of that short story and run off or did you stare out the window thinking about birds for about hour and without realizing it, slowed your breathing and blood pressure?
I know the focus here is on one of least favorite words, "productivity." But in my eyes, life is not meant to be productive, and I find it often to be a foolish goal.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:59 AM on September 30 [20 favorites]
I'm still reading this, nodding along with just about everything, but this part leapt out at me as wildly untrue in my experience and I wanted to just address it and go back to the article:
Quite a lot of people enjoy their commute time. And there’s good behavioral evidence for this because economists have noticed that people live a bit further from work than they optimally should in order to create a chronological buffer between where they work and where they live.
This has, again in my experience, fuck all to do with why people don't live close to work. Most sane people would choose to live within a few blocks of work, I think; as a youth, I knew someone whose dad literally lived next door to his job, and he was clearly a workaholic whose entire identity was tied to his career and that's not normal. I think that most people don't want to look at their workplace every time they walk out the door, but I also think most people want to be able to wake up late and still get to work on time if it comes to that.
Generally, they don't because of money. Work tends to be located in a place where property values are high. If you want an apartment near work, it's going to cost a lot. If you want to buy a house near work, you probably can't, because it's going to cost exponentially more.
I absolutely believe there are a very small number of very wealthy people who buy regal estates in the boonies and drive an hour to work every day because they want the experience of living in a regal estate, which logically can't exist in the context of an urban area. But even those people, I imagine -- and, really, I can only imagine it -- probably don't love the two hours a day they spend listening to audio books, it's just the thing they need to do in order to live the life they choose.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:00 AM on September 30 [15 favorites]
Quite a lot of people enjoy their commute time. And there’s good behavioral evidence for this because economists have noticed that people live a bit further from work than they optimally should in order to create a chronological buffer between where they work and where they live.
This has, again in my experience, fuck all to do with why people don't live close to work. Most sane people would choose to live within a few blocks of work, I think; as a youth, I knew someone whose dad literally lived next door to his job, and he was clearly a workaholic whose entire identity was tied to his career and that's not normal. I think that most people don't want to look at their workplace every time they walk out the door, but I also think most people want to be able to wake up late and still get to work on time if it comes to that.
Generally, they don't because of money. Work tends to be located in a place where property values are high. If you want an apartment near work, it's going to cost a lot. If you want to buy a house near work, you probably can't, because it's going to cost exponentially more.
I absolutely believe there are a very small number of very wealthy people who buy regal estates in the boonies and drive an hour to work every day because they want the experience of living in a regal estate, which logically can't exist in the context of an urban area. But even those people, I imagine -- and, really, I can only imagine it -- probably don't love the two hours a day they spend listening to audio books, it's just the thing they need to do in order to live the life they choose.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:00 AM on September 30 [15 favorites]
I was interested to read that men enjoy long commutes more than women because...they enjoy just relaxing and staring off into space, unlike women. It's funny, my immediate response would have been, "women enjoy long commutes less because they have a higher cognitive burden in re household stuff and probably have to get the dinner on top of making sure the kids do their homework and their spouse does whatever tasks are on their plate".
Granted, I think that an enjoyable commute, if your evening wasn't going to be a whirl of additional work and household management, could be pretty nice. Before the pandemic, I usually enjoyed my bike commute.
posted by Frowner at 7:21 AM on September 30 [22 favorites]
Granted, I think that an enjoyable commute, if your evening wasn't going to be a whirl of additional work and household management, could be pretty nice. Before the pandemic, I usually enjoyed my bike commute.
posted by Frowner at 7:21 AM on September 30 [22 favorites]
Before pandemic I had a commute that was awful by car but great by bike and train, because I made friends on the bike car of the train, and the ride from the train station to the office was 20 minutes mostly of bike trails along the water. Now my commute is 7 minutes of roads by bike and I’m much less fit, though it is nice to be able to get there quickly when I need to.
But more time in a car and traffic is definitely worse.
posted by aubilenon at 8:16 AM on September 30 [2 favorites]
But more time in a car and traffic is definitely worse.
posted by aubilenon at 8:16 AM on September 30 [2 favorites]
Great essay! It's got me reflecting on how I use my own time, and whether I'm misplacing some optimizations.
> Most sane people would choose to live within a few blocks of work, I think
In much of the USA, for sure. In Europe, where a commute is much less likely to involve an automobile moving among other densely-packed automobiles, I suspect it's a different equation.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 10:02 AM on September 30 [2 favorites]
> Most sane people would choose to live within a few blocks of work, I think
In much of the USA, for sure. In Europe, where a commute is much less likely to involve an automobile moving among other densely-packed automobiles, I suspect it's a different equation.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 10:02 AM on September 30 [2 favorites]
In Europe, where a commute is much less likely to involve an automobile moving among other densely-packed automobiles,
I just looked up the England, the majority of people drive and their median commute is the same as it is in the US, 28 minutes. There's actually research that says 30 minutes of commuting is basically the max that people will do without changing their circumstances dramatically (f they are able to do so). The US median commute in pretty much every major city is right at 30 minutes each direction.
That doesn't mean that at population levels, 'lots of people enjoy their commute' is not true, as at population levels, 'lots of people' also enjoy robbing convenience stores.
But if you are an engineer or town planner, and a working premise is 'people live where they live because they enjoy the commute', you are incorrect.
I actually think the essay is thought-provoking, but it has a glaring weak spot in that it never examines the other side, so to speak: that if you slow down, that's fine. it's a personal choice. But if everyone does, then you are stuck in the slow lane. Is that ok? IMO, for most of us, it would not be. It would really suck. That's why we (collectively) chose 'fast'.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:12 PM on September 30 [2 favorites]
I just looked up the England, the majority of people drive and their median commute is the same as it is in the US, 28 minutes. There's actually research that says 30 minutes of commuting is basically the max that people will do without changing their circumstances dramatically (f they are able to do so). The US median commute in pretty much every major city is right at 30 minutes each direction.
That doesn't mean that at population levels, 'lots of people enjoy their commute' is not true, as at population levels, 'lots of people' also enjoy robbing convenience stores.
But if you are an engineer or town planner, and a working premise is 'people live where they live because they enjoy the commute', you are incorrect.
I actually think the essay is thought-provoking, but it has a glaring weak spot in that it never examines the other side, so to speak: that if you slow down, that's fine. it's a personal choice. But if everyone does, then you are stuck in the slow lane. Is that ok? IMO, for most of us, it would not be. It would really suck. That's why we (collectively) chose 'fast'.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:12 PM on September 30 [2 favorites]
But I don't want someone's desire for speed (in any area) to rush ME, you know? That's where people get trapped, this URGENCY to work and pursuits. It's not weird to slow down. It's not weird to take time to enjoy things. It's not weird to not want work to dominate our lives.
Nap Ministry for the win. Lay your ass down.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:42 PM on September 30 [3 favorites]
Nap Ministry for the win. Lay your ass down.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:42 PM on September 30 [3 favorites]
I enjoy my commute a lot. I think it's because I've always loved interstitial time—those times when you're on a train or a plane, and you've got stuff to do in your past and stuff to do in your future but you're isolated from most of it. This was especially enjoyable in the pre-internet/pre-phone/pre-laptop days when it was very difficult to bring much work with you, or be responding to emails every X minutes.
I commute by mobility scooter and bus. My workplace is about nine miles away, and it takes me an hour to get there. There are various routes that I choose depending on where I might want to stop to run an errand, and depending on the weather. For instance, there's a bus that stops right in front of my apartment complex but it only runs every 38 minutes, so my usual way to work is to scoot about a mile to a business area and catch the bus that goes downtown about every 15 minutes. I don't have to be precise in my timing that way. I just go when I'm ready, and catch the next one.
I enjoy my mile-long scoot, which takes me past a lovely park with a small river flowing through it. I like seeing people along the way and saying hello to them, because I'm extra-friendly even for a Michigander. I like my time on the bus, which I might spend reading, or listening to music, or just looking out the window and noodling. The bus drops me at my workplace.
I also travel by train a lot, because I enjoy train time and train station time. (Some stations—like Chicago—much more than others—Toledo! the worst!).
I understand why people don't enjoy traveling the way I do, but I like being slow and I like being out of my life and all alone for awhile. And, honestly, it's much easier to travel by train and bus than by air or by car. When I was still driving myself to work, I got there faster but the effort it took to get my wheelchair out of the car, get myself into the building, and then load of the wheelchair afterward felt much harder than any option where I can just stay on my scooter. And in a car, errands require me to do that over and over again, whereas on my scooter, I can just pop into a store as I pass, or detour to the post office without increasing my pain and fatigue. But I also like how, once I'm on the bus, I don't have to worry about the traffic or paying careful attention to my surroundings. I can hand that responsibility off to the driver.
Sometimes I feel chagrined when someone asks me how long it takes to get to work, and I say, "About an hour." Everyone knows it's about a 25-minute drive. But it's so much better for me.
I'm not saying that what is right for me is right for everybody. My 17-year-old, for instance, has never enjoyed sitting still and thinking. He wants to always be moving, and he wants to always be in control. He enjoys flying places to visit his many friends, but he will never be a bus commuter short of very, very dire circumstances. I'm just agreeing with the article that some people—like me—enjoy their commute, and wouldn't necessarily want it to be faster.
posted by Well I never at 1:51 PM on September 30 [2 favorites]
I commute by mobility scooter and bus. My workplace is about nine miles away, and it takes me an hour to get there. There are various routes that I choose depending on where I might want to stop to run an errand, and depending on the weather. For instance, there's a bus that stops right in front of my apartment complex but it only runs every 38 minutes, so my usual way to work is to scoot about a mile to a business area and catch the bus that goes downtown about every 15 minutes. I don't have to be precise in my timing that way. I just go when I'm ready, and catch the next one.
I enjoy my mile-long scoot, which takes me past a lovely park with a small river flowing through it. I like seeing people along the way and saying hello to them, because I'm extra-friendly even for a Michigander. I like my time on the bus, which I might spend reading, or listening to music, or just looking out the window and noodling. The bus drops me at my workplace.
I also travel by train a lot, because I enjoy train time and train station time. (Some stations—like Chicago—much more than others—Toledo! the worst!).
I understand why people don't enjoy traveling the way I do, but I like being slow and I like being out of my life and all alone for awhile. And, honestly, it's much easier to travel by train and bus than by air or by car. When I was still driving myself to work, I got there faster but the effort it took to get my wheelchair out of the car, get myself into the building, and then load of the wheelchair afterward felt much harder than any option where I can just stay on my scooter. And in a car, errands require me to do that over and over again, whereas on my scooter, I can just pop into a store as I pass, or detour to the post office without increasing my pain and fatigue. But I also like how, once I'm on the bus, I don't have to worry about the traffic or paying careful attention to my surroundings. I can hand that responsibility off to the driver.
Sometimes I feel chagrined when someone asks me how long it takes to get to work, and I say, "About an hour." Everyone knows it's about a 25-minute drive. But it's so much better for me.
I'm not saying that what is right for me is right for everybody. My 17-year-old, for instance, has never enjoyed sitting still and thinking. He wants to always be moving, and he wants to always be in control. He enjoys flying places to visit his many friends, but he will never be a bus commuter short of very, very dire circumstances. I'm just agreeing with the article that some people—like me—enjoy their commute, and wouldn't necessarily want it to be faster.
posted by Well I never at 1:51 PM on September 30 [2 favorites]
kittens for breakfast: I also think most people want to be able to wake up late and still get to work on time
There was always a scale, the people living further away needing to get their commute exactly right, so building up the discipline to do so, versus the people nearby who could fall inexpensively and so often did just that.
I do wonder what the Premium Service machine assistant model looks like -- there's chat bots and customer service agents but fewer valet, concierge or butler tools.
posted by k3ninho at 2:14 PM on September 30
There was always a scale, the people living further away needing to get their commute exactly right, so building up the discipline to do so, versus the people nearby who could fall inexpensively and so often did just that.
I do wonder what the Premium Service machine assistant model looks like -- there's chat bots and customer service agents but fewer valet, concierge or butler tools.
posted by k3ninho at 2:14 PM on September 30
Often I feel like stuff like this romanticizes times/places/people in ways - we know what's wrong with us and our times and our lives, and then assume other times/places/lives are perfect.
In the opening here, the person who *isn't* the butt of the joke goes on about how great it would to have Hemingway's life. Which is.. uh... questionable...
posted by ManInSuit at 3:31 PM on September 30 [1 favorite]
In the opening here, the person who *isn't* the butt of the joke goes on about how great it would to have Hemingway's life. Which is.. uh... questionable...
posted by ManInSuit at 3:31 PM on September 30 [1 favorite]
I was interested to read that men enjoy long commutes more than women because...they enjoy just relaxing and staring off into space, unlike women.
Laughed out loud at that. I could spend literally hours every day just staring off into space, but no, I have to do my stupid exercise for my stupid health and work at my stupid job for my stupid money. If I had a commute I would 100% spend it just sitting and staring. But then I'd have to wake up early, and that is some bullshit.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:21 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]
Laughed out loud at that. I could spend literally hours every day just staring off into space, but no, I have to do my stupid exercise for my stupid health and work at my stupid job for my stupid money. If I had a commute I would 100% spend it just sitting and staring. But then I'd have to wake up early, and that is some bullshit.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:21 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]
I thought this was familiar, the speedometer is what did it: I recently watched a video of him give a speech on this a couple of months ago at "Nudgestock: the world's largest festival of Behavioural Science and Creativity" and it IS mentioned right at the end of the essay.
posted by fridgebuzz at 10:16 AM on October 1 [1 favorite]
posted by fridgebuzz at 10:16 AM on October 1 [1 favorite]
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It reminded me of a personal example of the impact of optimising for speed (and price). In the late 1990s I was travelling from Vancouver to Alberta to meet my in-laws for the first time. We had travelled up via the Pacific Northwest on a flexible schedule, and ended up with less time than planned to get across, and money was tight... and so we caught an overnight Greyhound across the Rockies to Edmonton.
Not the best way to see the Canadian Rockies for the first time. Not that "see" is relevant here, although I remember seeing the bus station at Kamloops when we pulled into it. A bunch of bright lights through a rainy bus window in the dark.
I did get to enjoy the Rockies in winter a few years later, fortunately—in the daytime.
posted by rory at 3:22 AM on September 30 [1 favorite]