Time
Time
Time has crossed my thoughts quite frequently in the last few weeks. It is such an interesting concept. Just think about it: most of us see time as something inevitable that just flows relentlessly and generally makes us feel like we are not getting anywhere – even though for some people, those who are waiting for something – time seems endless. And the relativity of time has been confirmed by Einstein’s theories (though relative in relation to mass, not whether we are waiting or having to get something done). Before thermodynamics was conceptualised, physics had no way of proving that time was going one way only, as all Newtonian physics is in principle reversible.
Most of my paid work is still based on units of time. I use up units of time and bill my clients for each unit used up while producing something for them. Both is measurable - the amount of time I have used up and the amount of stuff I have produced (workshops agendas, workshop moderation, reports, trainings, etc.). Yet when I think of value created for that client and the people who come to my workshops and read my reports, I struggle to relate that value in a straightforward way with the time I spend on producing it – even with the act of producing itself. Yet I haven’t been able to find a satisfactory alternative way of having clients pay for my work, even though I have tried a few. The perceived relation of ‘time is money’ keeps defining my work life, sadly.
Nitzan Hermon writes in Utility and Value:
Modern life conflates utility and value. Value is observer-specific; it is intrinsic meaning, situational context. It is primarily subjective and nuances. Utility lives in spreadsheets and the world of numbers. It is the work of generalizations, of ‘just enough.’ Utility scales; it is the common language strangers can use. Merchants can put it on shelves with a price tag. It is the disembodiment.
In our Western society, the physical time has become the predominant conception of time – the inevitable growth of entropy eventually leading to a cold, dead universe. Or in shorter time frames (no pun!), meaning the inevitability of our own death. Time is limited, so make the best of it! I assume this perception is one reason we are so obsessed with progress and growth (both personal growth and growth of the economy). Let’s make the best of it while we can! Yet the logic of thermodynamics applies to closed systems only. You can stop the inevitable decay into infinite entropy by investing work into a closed system. We can outsource the decay. When cities are seen as closed systems, they outsource their decay, as Tyson Yunkaporta noted in his book ‘Sand Talk’:
A city is a community on the arrow of time, an upward-trending arrow demanding perpetual growth. Growth is the engine of the city—if the increase stops, the city falls. Because of this, the local resources are used up quickly and the lands around the city die. The biota is stripped, then the topsoil goes, then the water. … A city tells itself it is a closed system that must decay in order for time to run straight, while simultaneously demanding eternal growth. This means it must outsource decay for as long as possible. (Yunkaporta 2019, 57-58)
Yet the world is not built out of isolated, closed systems. It has organically grown as a system of interconnected and interdependent open systems. Energy is flowing freely between these systems, decay leading to regeneration leading to decay in endless cycles of life. And while the physicists may be right that, ultimately, all energy will dissipate and the universe will be a cold place in eternal equilibrium, life as it plays out on earth has been ducking that trend and stayed far away from equilibrium – benefitting from the energy of the sun. So we also should apply a model of time that is more appropriate for our times (pun intended this time). After all, the way we perceive and act on time is a social construct.
Reference: Yunkaporta, Tyson. 2019.Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. Text Publishing.
The Paper Museum
In the Paper Museum I’m sharing interesting extracts of texts I have read that I’m collecting every week.
Questions to explore relational leadership by Tenneson Woolf:
- How are you doing? It matters that we cultivate an emotive quality with the people that we work with. It matters that we have the capacity and the compassion to recognize that most of us live pretty complex lives. Whether it’s work. Or family. Or home-schooling. Or CoVid. Or a dozen other things. It’s not that we have to follow every nuance of our co-worker’s lives. However, it matters that we be deliberate in recognizing more of the wholebeingness of ourselves and our coworkers.
- What do you care about? Whenever a group is stuck, I rely on this question. What is it that you most care about here? What is it that got you into this kind of work in the first place? Inviting people to speak to what they care about brings in the heart to any of the endeavors we are in. Sometimes the question is more specific in scale — what is it that you care about in this project? Sometimes it is more general — what is it that you more care about in the next year of what we are up to? Care invites yearning. Care invites longing. It’s important not only to the individual but also to the group.
- What might you uniquely be seeing? Again, this is such a great question to ask of ourselves and of each other. It’s invitation to see more of what is going on from unique vantage point. There’s the obvious in this — what do you see working in different functions. But there’s also a bunch of other ways that we are diverse and different with each other. It matters that we invoke the possibility that what one person sees might complete the picture of the puzzle that we are working on. I love the surprise that can come from such invitation — what might you uniquely be seeing.
Reference: Woolf, Tenneson. 2021. “Relational Leadership.” Tenneson Woolf (blog). May 17, 2021.http://www.tennesonwoolf.com/relational-leadership/.
Why did I add this to my paper museum? Because I love the idea of relational leadership and because I love leading with questions instead of answers. What particularly touched me was the personal nature of the question that allow people to show up as their whole selves, not in a purely professional persona. How are you, really? Also the question of care is important for me because I think we need to care much more about stuff. Maybe the question ‘What do we care about?’ can replace the question ‘What is our purpose?’.
More for you to enjoy
What if time stood still? A poem by Pablo Neruda
Keeping Quiet
Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
Extravagaria: A Bilingual Edition
by Pablo Neruda (Author), Alastair Reid (Translator)
Noonday Press; Bilingual edition (January 2001)
Source: https://english.duke.edu/news/poem-day-keeping-quiet