Time and Life Central to many contemporary social interactions is a notion of quantified exchange. So ubiquitous is our attention to exchange that many of us carry it into even such intimate settings as marriage or parent-child relations. So careful are we becoming to measure that which we offer and ask of each other that a growing number of us carry appointment books in which to schedule our lives to the minute. Before continuing to treat our very selves as commodities to be bought, sold, and traded, we might pause to clarify our ideas of value, and the means by which we aim to realize them. We apply concepts of time to quantify certain aspects of life, but life can hardly be reduced to mere time.
Many people embark upon one or another planning regimen with attention primarily to time.
To do so is to risk achieving efficiency without finding satisfaction. In planning towards satisfaction we first identify that which we value. Only then do we select our activities and the schedule by which we will order them. On one end of the spectrum of planning personalities sit those whom we characterize as obsessive, compulsive, tense, and hurried, while at the other are those we call lazy, indifferent, scattered, and slow. Perhaps you are acquainted with someone figuratively chained to the clock, a person who seeks to be invariably prompt, exact in scheduling, and fastidious with time records.