Timelock: How Life Got so Hectic and What You Can Do About It

(Note: in lieu of an actual excerpt, the following is an article written for Parade magazine summarizing the key points of Timelock)

When traffic can no longer move, engineers say it's reached a state of "gridlock." Many of us are in a state of "timelock." Timelock occurs when demands on our time become so overwhelming that it feels impossible to wring one more second out of crowded schedules and hectic days. As a Minneapolis businesswoman described this condition, "You prioritize, list your 'musts,' then you can't even get to your musts."

For the past three years I've studied how time pressure affects Americans from all walks of life. Nearly 450 subjects filled out my questionnaire on this subject. Of them, 57% said that their lives had grown busier during the past year. Over half agreed with the statement "there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I have to do." Another 30% concurred that "on the whole I have just about enough time to do what I have to do." In other words, the vast majority said they had virtually no free time.

"Our studies clearly show that people feel they have less and less time," reports Tom Miller, editor of the Roper poll's Public Pulse. Like many analysts, Miller believes the feeling of being overwhelmed by time demands will grow. Why should this be? In an age of fax machines and microwave ovens, how did time get so scarce? Shouldn't rising standards of living produce more leisure? Can anything be done to alleviate time's pressure?

Such questions were of intense interest to subjects I interviewed throughout the country. When asked if time was an issue for them, some simply clutched their stomachs and moaned. Others spoke right up. "Time is the most precious commodity I've got," said Leon Ciferni, a veteran Manhattan lawyer. "I don't have enough of it. It used to be money, now it's time."

"The sign of the times is that our mothers used to bake brownies," observed Pam Gallagher, a supermarket supervisor in Providence, Rhode Island. "With a microwave mix you can have brownies in six minutes. My son and I love them. I think they're comparable. He wouldn't know. He once said, 'Mom, what's apple pie?'"

Many of those I interviewed wondered how their parents could enjoy more relaxed lives with less money and fewer conveniences. What we too seldom realize is that modern advantages themselves put pressure on our time. Today's average starter home is twice as big as one built after World War II. That's a lot more house to buy, furnish and maintain. Inside our bigger homes we consider far more items "standard" than our parents did: coffee makers, microwave ovens, garage door openers, air conditioning, color TVs, cable, a VCR, stereo, Walkman, several phones, multiple bathrooms and perhaps a home computer. We want to own more, do more and be more than our parents ever dreamed of. Such ambitions sponge up time.

Too Many Choices. According to Carlsbad, California psychologist Larry Chamow, one problem that cuts across generational lines is coping with today's many choices. "Most of the people I see are frustrated by them," says Chamow. "All of these things you could do." The number of decisions we must make in a given day -- about activities, friendships, phone plans, TV shows, lifestyles, mail-order offers and cereal brands -- has mushroomed. Roper's poll of consumers finds rising concern about "brand clutter." Last year 13,000 new products jostled for space on supermarket shelves, more than twelve times the number that were introduced a decade earlier. In 1980 Americans had 458 mutual funds to choose from. Now several thousand vie for their attention. Having so many options increases our flexibility. It also is a major source of time pressure.

Time-Consuming Time-Savers. One way we try to ease time pressure is with modern conveniences. Too often, however, such labor-savers consume more time than they save. By simplifying chores, appliances encourage us to do more of them. Power mowers give us less excuses for not cutting the grass. Blow dryers let us wash our hair daily. Dustbusters make it possible to suck dirt regularly from spaces vacuum cleaners can't reach. Washer-dryers allow us to do laundry constantly rather than weekly. "We don't wear our clothes to the limit," pointed out Sue Robbins, a mother of two in Sacramento. "I do significantly more laundry than my mother did."

Nearly every study of time spent doing chores has reached the same conclusion: labor-savers relieve drudgery and speed tasks, but on balance don't save time. Nor do they make life less hectic. We may no longer haul water, split wood, trim wicks, clean lamps, boil clothes, feed horses or bake bread. We do chauffeur kids, fight traffic, stand in supermarket lines, fend off telemarketers, decipher manuals, and repeatedly try to figure out how to re-set the digital clocks on our many conveniences. Even a revolutionary appliance like the microwave oven has altered schedules more than it's eased them. During a chat in her New York office, a bank executive observed that her microwave made it unnecessary to spend Sunday cooking a week's meals. "Instead," she said, "I come in here."

The Vanishing Pause. One way in which modern technology allows us to do more is by eliminating "unnecessary" delays: to boil water, wind a watch, or put paper in the typewriter. Taken together such vanishing pauses deprive us of opportunities to catch our breath. No wonder the pace of life feels breathless.

Consider this progress chart:

SLOW MOTION	CRUISE CONTROL	FAST FORWARD
buttons	zippers	Velcro
stove	pressure cooker	microwave
washboard	wringer-washer	washer-dryer
pen	typewriter	word processor
abacus	adding machine	calculator
operator	rotary dial	touch-tone
U.S. Mail	Federal Express	fax

Few pieces of technology have hastened life's pace as quickly as fax machines. One day we wondered if the mail would arrive in the next hour or two; the next day we tapped our toe impatiently for the few seconds it took a letter to roll out of the fax. Many consider civilized communication to be a victim of fax machines. "I can no longer say, 'I'll mail that to you,'" explained a Philadelphia businesswoman. "Now it's, 'Fax it to me!' That's stepped up the pace tremendously."

It's hard not to get caught up in today's hectic pace. On my questionnaire, 64% said they felt rushed constantly or often. Another 30% said they sometimes felt that way. We've become a nation of rushaholics. Time pressure is our constant companion. The price we pay for this is steep. The impact of what physician Larry Dossey calls "time sickness" can be seen in conditions ranging from stomach disorders to heart disease. Psychologically, feeling under time's gun makes it hard to pay attention -- even to people we care about. "My mind's always racing," is a common explanation for chronically short attention spans. Family life is being corroded by over-crowded calendars. According to Richard Louv, author of Childhood's Future , time is the element most lacking in today's parent-child relations. When I asked a 10 year-old outside Philadelphia if he resented the long hours put in by his working mother, the boy replied, "not really. I'm so busy I wouldn't be home to see her anyway."

Must we all fall prey to time's pressure? Not necessarily. Making our lives less frantic, however, takes initiative. As technology speeds the pace of life, it's up to us to slow it down. This does not necessarily mean throwing away our microwave ovens and growing roses to smell. It does mean paying better attention to the time cost of what we do, and aspire to do.

Here are some suggestions for ways to make your life less hectic.

1) Plan Life, Not Time. Only after determining what we want from life (as opposed to how much we can "get done") can we change direction timewise.

think regularly about what your want from your life
evaluate all activities, even the most trivial, by whether or not they add to that life
weed ruthlessly whatever does not: tasks, errands, TV shows, people

2) Manage Time Organically. Time is uniform only to clocks. Our bodies keep irregular time, based on sunlight, temperature, and the uneven tempo of work and leisure which first set our inner clocks.

get to know your own body's clock, paying particular attention to peak periods
take advantage of peak periods in scheduling work; if you don't control your work schedule, try to negotiate one which allows this (it's in everyone's interest)
routinely cross items off your To Do list undone
don't make use of every minute; this only increases tension while reducing effectiveness

3) Decelerate. Rushing is addictive. Once hooked, it's hard to remember that the fastest way of doing things isn't always the best way.

when hurried, ask yourself: Do I really need to rush? What's the worst thing that can happen to me if I don't? Is that worse than what it's costing me to hurry?
distinguish between necessary haste (late for an appointment) and mere impatience (one-hour photo developing)
make a conscious effort to not always take the faster path; use stairs at times instead of elevators; walk rather than drive; cut and grate food you used to process; use your head instead of a calculator

4) Reduce Awareness of Time. How often do we really need to know what time it is? The fewer reminders we have of time, the better we can make this commodity serve rather than master us.

pay attention to how often you "check the time;" try to reduce such occasions to a minimum
go watchless whenever possible
create a mental map of sanctuaries from time: churches, parks, libraries, hotel lobbies; retreat to them often
cultivate an interest in clock-free activities such as baseball, chess, quilt-making, potting, fly tying

5) Pay Attention. The chief reward for pruning hectic schedules is improved attention for those you care about. To take advantage:

spend more time per person with less people
give full attention to those people, without the TV on, a newspaper in hand, or a constant mental review of what else you might be doing
review schedules regularly with those sharing your life; look for activities to eliminate

6) Accomplish More by Doing Less. Controlling the volume of our activities makes it possible not only to ease time pressure but to get more out of life overall.

before adding a new activity, subtract an old one
accept that you can't have it all, and wouldn't want to
treat career plateaus, tempered ambition, even reduced income as a potential time bonanza
approach growing older as an excellent opportunity to ease your pace and do more of what you really want to do

The key to timelock is in our own hands. Outer pressure will always be with us. Society pays lip service to smelling the roses but actual support to getting more done faster. Seeking a more balanced schedule takes personal effort.

Many are making that effort. Such people have concluded that they can't have at all, and don't want to try. They are searching for more relaxed, less frantic ways of life. One mother in Maine traded her fast-track banking career for part-time work and more time with her two daughters. A Florida family required all members to make time to be present for dinner. One in Kansas swapped lists of their activities, then pruned them to create more time for each other. A mother of four in Michigan took up beekeeping as a source of honey and serenity. "My pace automatically slows as I approach the hives," she reported. "One never rushes up on a bee."

Keeping bees is one way to ease life's pace. There are many others. Invent your own. Making life less hectic does not suggest lack of drive. To the contrary. Only by slowing down and pruning our schedules can we reclaim the most valuable thing we own: our time.