The Diminishing Returns of Calendar Culture

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Monochronic cultures may be more “efficient” in their use of time, but in their treatment of time as a commodity, they lose the richness that comes with allowing tasks, conversations, and interactions to move forward at a more natural and sustainable pace.

Culture Study • The Diminishing Returns of Calendar Culture

You make it (somewhat) arbitrary. Divide the world into 24 time zones, and slowly force people — often through colonial might — to abide by one, standard time for an entire wedge. Do it in the name of commerce, of travel, of ease of communication, of ease . Fast-forward a century and a half, and this rational/irrational time

Culture Study • The Diminishing Returns of Calendar Culture

We live with these realities because they make the rest of our lives feel manageable. But time did not have to be arranged that way. We have imagined time, at least in Western countries, as subservient to commerce, and attempted to export or forcibly impose that understanding worldwide.

Culture Study • The Diminishing Returns of Calendar Culture

Several attributes and practices valorized by a monochronic understanding of time —which we could also call Rapid-Growth Capitalism time, or Productivity Fetishist time, or White Bourgeois time — are objectively in service of efficiency. And yet, big surprise, they are often highly inefficient.

Culture Study • The Diminishing Returns of Calendar Culture

People call too many meetings when they want to feel more in control; those meetings often make you worse at completing whatever task or project you’re struggling to complete, in part because they’re conducted in a mononchronic way, reinscribing systems of authority, obsessed with (inactionable) action plans, and never actually building any sort of... See more

Culture Study • The Diminishing Returns of Calendar Culture

Resisting new technology is, itself, a power move: a way to make other people do more work to compensate for the work you’re not doing. The point is: resisting someone else’s understanding and organization of time is a power move.

Culture Study • The Diminishing Returns of Calendar Culture

Within these sorts of schedules, there is little tolerance or space for the things we say we want to nurture in children: creativity, imagination, spontaneity, the patience borne of extended boredom, space to really feel your emotions, or any activity that can’t be boiled down into a potential line on a future college application. (There’s also lit... See more