For the lunch example, I tell people that I'd love to do it, so please text me the morning of and I'll let you know if I can make it. That answer is (1) more realistic, and (2) more flexible.
You can do this for meetings, too. Rather than immediately setting up a "2pm brainstorming session," tell them that you'll email over your thoughts and ideas sometime tomorrow.
I really don't understand how scheduling fixed-time appointments became the natural order. Challenge that assumption and you'll be amazed at how it impacts life for the better.
PG wrote about this in an essay entitled, "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule." [1] You may have read it already, but if you haven't, I think it will really resonate with you.
I'm no historian, but the general gist I got is that with the shift from bespoke to industrial society came a regimenting of schedule. Could have sworn I read about this somewhere ("Peopleware"? "Lies my Teacher Told Me"?), and maybe even caught a synopsis on a book dedicated to the topic, but titles escape me right now. Might be worth looking into.
It depends on the work you do. Most of us on HN are typically doing open-ended work. We do not really know how long it will take. Time-fixed appointments make a lot of sense for someone who is working primarily with lots of people or who always has more requests than time to attend to them.
Living without time... except notifications of impending appointments. That's a fairly significant exception!
Before we had computers to keep track of time and give us notifications there was a good need for us to know what time it was, so we could manually track our synchronized events - automation or outsourcing it was prohibitively expensive for a lot of purposes. Now we can move most of that clock tracking to easy, cheap, and convenient tools and live a more event driven lifestyle without losing the major benefits of worrying about what time it is. Sure there are still a few times it becomes a thing - scheduling meetings for later, figuring priorities based on deadlines, wondering if i have enough time to get into something before scheduled events, but outside these planning moments, most of the concern need no be there.
Here is the really neat thing IMHO - as we all move into this event driven paradigm, the clock may not even be the big source of synchronization.. A lot of my meetings are not decided because "this is the perfect time for it", but on "we are all available". Ok great, that means most of my meetings are pretty fungible on when they can happen. So why not put a flag on those meetings, with a reasonable priority and set of boundaries on specific times... then have a piece of software that learns my activities to figure out when I am most interruptible, and communicates with other meeting participants to just interrupt us all for the meeting at good times? Yeah its NP hard, but for small groups not that expensive anyway. It certainly helps manage the rift between the maker schedule and the manager schedule.
EDIT: Upon further reflection now I think I get it. It's not that Steve is living without time, but more accurately he's living without clocks. There's a subtle but important difference.
Which is certainly a significant change, and a welcome one at that.
I imagine Daylight Saving Time and cloudy days wreak havoc with methods like the author uses.
Somehow, I only notice the time on my phone if I specifically pull it out for the purpose. I only notice the clock on my laptop when I'm curious about it.
I don't think banishing clocks is necessary: just care less about them.
This. But you can't feel all hip and special and write blog posts about that people call "beautiful".
Personally I don't think this would match my lifestyle. I don't know anything about this persons lifestyle but most employed people and students have deadlines they need to meet and that requires to know the clock to the minute.
Living 'without time' is a great idea and is ideal for how we, as humans, have developed. Unfortunately, in the real world, the rest of us need to use time to make sure we do things on other peoples schedules. Whether it be the boss, the airline, the doctor, the kid's school or whatever, we need to make sure we're aligned.
You will only be able to really do this if none of those things apply to you and you can spend your days doing whatever you want.
I could not help but laugh at this comment, coming from the "writer" of http://www.scalingphpbook.com/. With no significant updates or communications in months, despite promises made to the many Beta access customers, this comment made me literally laugh out loud.
Yeah Steve, we can tell.
BTW- I just checked my email to make sure I didn't miss something from you. I personally emailed you when you bought my book, thanking you. You never contacted me. Why would you air your dirty laundry here first?
And to defend myself, I just checked, and have no emails from you since June 8th (yes that was a personal one from you which was appreciated), including in Spam. The only emails I've seen are from upset people asking what the deal is, via github comments. Perhaps there is some problem with the emailing system? Is there some other newsletter link I missed?
And again just to reiterate, the content of the book so far is great, and I will recommend it, however I know I am not the only upset customer.
Looks at clock. 7:00 I should wake up 7:15 shower 7:45 do random crap at home, stressing over clock cuz I don't wanna be late 9:00 I should be at work. 9:45 I made it. 11:00, really? okay haven't done shit all day, time to do that thing. 11:15 really. I REALLY gotta do that thing. It's 12:30 but thing isn't done. However I should go to lunch. 1:30? Waiter, we've been sitting here for 30 min, our food isn't here, and I gotta get back to work by 2:00. 1:45 staring at clock while eating. If I leave the cafe at 2:00, I'll only be a little late.
And so on.
I have had jobs like that.
Now I am in my dream job (not much really, I am a software developer in the aircraft industry) but the day is very different. I feel just as relaxed at work as I am at home. I dont mind being at work and when I come home its very much different from before.
I dont think you stress out from looking at the clock too much. I think you looks at the clock too much because you are stressed and that heightens the stress levels.
My daughter has to be at school at a particular time. She gets off the afternoon bus at a particular time. Completely living "without time" isn't possible when you have to synchronize with anything else in the world. Not having to synchronize would be great, and you can have that kind of independence - it would take work to get there, but I think it'd be worth it.
Hugh Brody Maps and Dreams tells of land use mapping with indigenous people in Canada. They lived without time OK, adjusting activities with the length of the day, and their movement around their land by the seasons and the game available.
Barry Lopez Arctic Dreams tells the story, among other things, of the Government school teachers in a far North village who tried to get the children into school between 9 and 4 on weekdays during the summer (24 hour daylight). The children normally went to sleep when they wanted to. The community reaction was to leave the doors of the cabins unlocked and to suggest that the teachers could come and get the children if they wanted them there....
As this is HN, do we think that a significant number of people could adopt this kind of approach to time given distributed education, home working, ubiquitous computing &c? Remember that my Granddad (born 1892 in UK) went from working in the fields by the light of the Sun to punching a clock in a factory, via the First World War.
I washed mine by accident, left it in my trouser pocket. Been using the phone since.
"I learned how to read the sun"
My granddad did that, and the stars when visible. Maritime upbringing.
As a teacher, I need to be in the right room at the right time and it is my responsibility to manage the lesson so it finishes on time. There are other ways of organising education of course...
http://www.steinerwaldorf.org.uk/upperschool.html
...but I don't think society at large is ready for those yet.
For me, a clock is invaluable. I'd much rather simply look at the clock than have reminders pinging off of events which occur at the same time daily. But I can see how one wouldn't really know which works better for them until trying each way.
While its probably a good thing to minimize staring at the clock, possibly stressing yourself, it seems more like "living without constantly watching the time" instead of "living without time", which would be substantially harder (and IMHO, of doubtful benefit)
For a more micro attempt at achieving something similar, I've recently experimented with leaving my phone at home during the day for 3-4 hour periods at a time when I go to school. A few things happen:
- I feel more calm and focused without the anxiety of another device to constantly check --> I'm better able to focus in lectures
- I surprisingly frequently pat my pocket when walking on my 20-minute commute to see if my phone's there. I notice many people outside staring into their iPhones and Android devices like zombies.
- When I return, any calls, text messages, reminders, emails, and notifications found do not really seem all that important nor urgent. Having the ability to avoid such distractions feels like positive steps in reducing impulsive behavior.
I don't have a cell phone, and after I put my pocket watch through the laundry, I don't carry a watch either.
Unfortunately, as a software developer, pretty much every day is perforated with meetings, and as a bus commuter, I am locked to various schedules, so I can't quite go timeless.
Easing into it, though, just removing the clock on my laptop... still have flights to catch etc.
