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For a few years now. In my life, I have adopted the habit of having more attention on the use of my time. First I asked myself and then I investigated: How long is the average, in general, that the human lives today? The answer I found is: four thousand weeks. Obviously, this figure is approximate, and is also classified as “average”.  In addition, I found that Mrs. Jeanne Calment, a French woman, at the time of her death in 1997, was found to be one hundred and twenty-two years old, who became the oldest known person. In addition, I found that there is a very palpable but not so well-known paradox: The philosophers of ancient Greece have considered that “the brevity of life is the problem that defines human existence”: we have been granted the mental capacity to elaborate infinitely ambitious plans, but not enough time to put them into practice. That time granted passes us so quickly and quickly that, except for very few, the rest abandon life, during the very preparations of life, “laments Seneca.De everything previously written it is possible to deduce that “time management”, in broad terms, should be our main concern. Arguably, life is no longer about managing time. And yet, the modern discipline known as “time management” and its fashionable relative, productivity, is rather depressing and short-term, and is geared towards doing as much work as possible or figuring out the perfect morning routine or cooking all the week’s meals on Sundays. To be sure, the above is not the only thing that matters. The universe is full of wonders, but few people dedicated to managing productivity seem to realize that the main goal of our frenetic activity should be to enjoy those wonders more. The world, in addition, seems to be going to waste – our life as citizens is crazy, a pandemic has paralyzed society, and the planet is getting hotter and hotter–, however it is not easy to find a time management system that allows us to devote ourselves, in a productive way, to activities that involve fellow citizens, or that deal with issues related to the situations of the world or the environment. Of course. There is no one who is not aware, in a way, that there is no time for everything. We live obsessed with our “inboxes” overflowing with emaisl, and our increasingly long to-do lists feeling more and more guilty for not doing more, or for not doing other things or for both sensations at the same time. Finally, I have found a maddening truth about time, the one that most of those who give advice on how to manage it tend to forget. It’s like an unruly child: the more you try to master him, to make him adapt to circumstances, the more he escapes your control. Think of all the technology meant to help you beat time: by any sensible logic in a world with dishwashers, microwaves and jet engines, time would seem vaster and more abundant, thanks to all the hours that have been left free. But no one lives it that way. In fact, life accelerates more and people become more impatient. For some reason, it makes us more crazy to wait two minutes in the microwave than two hours in the oven.



Original source in Spanish