We try so hard to accomplish as much as possible. To be efficient. Get more done. Plan your downtime. We hear all this in countless books, videos, podcasts, and who knows where else. We squeeze ourselves dry to get more done and extract more from our time.

Have you ever been truly bored? So bored that you have absolutely nothing to do? If you have, we often quickly find something to occupy ourselves with. Most likely, we grab our smartphones, or a housewife always finds some extra chores to do around the house. Nowadays, we’ve completely forgotten how to be bored.

Time Management Has Lost Its Original Purpose

When time management first emerged, it was rooted in philosophy. The main problem time management sought to solve was how to manage time to fill life with meaning and make it better. How to organize your time to achieve your highest priorities. Modern time management has completely lost its essence. It’s time management for the sake of time management. Many time management books are written by consultants and are filled with tips and tricks just to help you get more done.

Why Not End It All Today?

One of the big questions in philosophy is: Why not end it all today? From the perspective of the “Red Pill” by the esteemed Andrei Kurpatov, such thoughts only come to mind during moments of idleness or failure when we allow ourselves to ponder the meaning (or lack thereof). I must admit, Andrei Kurpatov’s work is quite interesting, informative, and educational, though at times pessimistic.

If you stop, let go of the urge to occupy yourself with something, and start thinking about why you do what you do, it can be terrifying. So many thoughts will flood your mind that it’s just scary. It’s much easier to brush all these thoughts aside and continue running in the usual rhythm.

But what if you stop and think? Why are we really trying to squeeze more juice out of our time? Why am I doing this or that? Am I trying to be productive just for the sake of being productive? What exactly am I trying to achieve by learning various time management skills and trying to get more done? A well-known American YouTuber, Thomas Frank, said something interesting—that he wants more time to play his favorite video game. Are we ready to admit to ourselves, to truly tell ourselves the truth—why do I need to get more done?

Where Is the Real Truth?

Why do we do what we do? Are we trying to climb the career ladder faster? Are we trying to finish work quicker so we can spend more time with our families? There’s a high chance that the honest answer will either be deeply hidden or very unpleasant for us.

What do we really want? Do we sit on the couch and ponder what we would do if we had a million dollars?

How important is time, really? What is its value, and can it be bought? Is it really as priceless as we always hear? It’s one thing to say beautifully that it’s priceless, and quite another to immediately turn on a TV show or open YouTube at the first free moment.

Professional Time Management

In school, we are taught many useful skills that we will need later in life. But the skills that determine the course of our lives—we are not taught those in school. Now, looking back, you start to think how great it would have been if, for example, I had been taught in school how to manage personal finances instead of learning about the GDP of different countries. How wonderful it would be to know how to organize my time. But no—we learn these skills in life, through experience, often through hard lessons, like when we burn out and try to figure out what went wrong.

We’ve Received Something We Don’t Know How to Manage

Our grandparents had far less free time than we do. They worked longer hours. They had to do laundry by hand. Cooking meals started from scratch. Fortunately, they had a stove and didn’t need to start a fire for cooking. We have more free time than they did, yet it’s us who complain about not having enough time, not them.

What do we have now? Freedom and flexibility. We can choose when to buy groceries online or when to watch our favorite show. How we manage our time is now much more in our hands than it used to be. Now we have to make the decisions, not external circumstances. Have we been taught to make these decisions? No! Are we constantly afraid of missing out on something? Yes!

To conclude, I’d like to offer a quote and a video:

“Sometimes the best way to destroy a person is to give them the freedom to choose their destiny.” This is what Woland said during his conversation with Margarita.

TED Talk by Brad Aeon:
https://www.ted.com/talks/brad_aeon_the_philosophy_of_time_management