Fighting for Time

Are you struggling to get deep work done? Let's explore what 'time poverty' is and how you can beat it using the 'me-time' framework.

Photo by My Profit Tutor on Unsplash

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In a previous chapter, The Rhythm of Attention, I wrote,

How we envision time can determine how we make use of time, how we navigate via the clock and the calendar, and how we find our place in it.

Circumstances can conspire to disrupt our own rhythm of time. The most obvious disruption is when we feel that we have too much to do, that we lack sufficient time to accomplish all that we need to do. This turns out to be a universal, and growing, conviction.

We are all, in a sense, fighting for time.

In recent years, the concept of 'time poverty' has arisen as one factor in the paradox identified by Richard Edelin in the 1970s: while economic growth in the U.S. had steadily grown, people's level of happiness had not. In particular, even people with growing affluence expressed being time poor. Researchers Laura M. Giurge, Ashley V. Whillans, and Colin West define it this way:

Defined as the chronic feeling of having too many things to do and not enough time to do them, time poverty is increasing in society. Data from the Gallup US Daily Poll – a nationally representative sample of US residents– shows that, in 2011, 70% of employed Americans reported that they “never had enough time,” and in 2018, this proportion increased to 80%.