A thought-provoking piece from Derek Thompson:
“What is an
economy? You might say it is how people who cannot predict the future deal with
it.
People save money
to protect themselves from calamity. Banks charge interest to account for risk.
People trade stocks to bet on the earnings trajectory of a company. The first
taxes were levied to support standing armies that could fight in the event of
an invasion.
Time’s unknowable
perils contributed to the flourishing of economic thought. But then something
interesting happened. The creature became the creator: The economy re-invented
time. Or, to put things less obliquely, the age of exploration and the
industrial revolution completely changed the way people measure time,
understand time, and feel and talk about time.”
Related:
Why time management is ruining our lives by Oliver Burkeman
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/22/why-time-management-is-ruining-our-lives
“Given that the average lifespan consists of only about 4,000 weeks, a certain amount of anxiety about using them well is presumably inevitable: we’ve been granted the mental capacities to make infinitely ambitious plans, yet almost no time at all to put them into practice. The problem of how to manage time, accordingly, goes back at least to the first century AD, when the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote On The Shortness of Life. “This space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily, and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live,” he said, chiding his fellow citizens for wasting their days on pointless busyness, and “baking their bodies in the sun”.
“Given that the average lifespan consists of only about 4,000 weeks, a certain amount of anxiety about using them well is presumably inevitable: we’ve been granted the mental capacities to make infinitely ambitious plans, yet almost no time at all to put them into practice. The problem of how to manage time, accordingly, goes back at least to the first century AD, when the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote On The Shortness of Life. “This space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily, and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live,” he said, chiding his fellow citizens for wasting their days on pointless busyness, and “baking their bodies in the sun”.