What if time wasn’t something we had to hoard, protect, or chase? What if we could change our relationship to time—to life itself—expanding beyond the linear, grid-like units running out as we race against the clock, and toward a true sense of aliveness instead?
Today’s I’m trying an experimental format: diving deep into a book that relates to so much of what we talk about here, Jenny Odell’s Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. I haven’t landed an interview with her (yet!), but I also really appreciated her previous book, How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, so am happy to spotlight both.
A few caveats: This is not a book review where I critically examine the content (here are two from The New Yorker and the NYT), nor a comprehensive summary. Instead, I’m bringing you three big ideas from the book related to our Free Time universe, that sparked aha moments and mindset shifts for me. I hope these inspire similar paradigm shifts for you. As always, my goal is to help set even more of your time freeeeeee!
🌟 3 Key Takeaways
Notice the productivity paradigm that many of us are still operating under: Seeing our days as a race against time, leading to an internal tyranny and guilt even if self-employed.
Embrace the roads not taken: Step off the hedonic treadmill by allowing limits, and even deliberate mediocrity. Who gets to say what is mediocre in the first place?
Cultivate abundance: “What if time [could] be gardened?” Jenny writes, “Then it's also possible to imagine its increase in ways other than individual hoarding.”
📝 Permission
To be tired in a good way, one that softens you; to be unproductive, to stop optimizing every micro moment of your day, to do less, to be free.
✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next
Be an observer as you go about your week; look for people and places that give you time, that expand your sense of aliveness.
🔗 Resources Mentioned
The New Yorker—Why We Never Have Enough Time
📘Books Mentioned
Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell
How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
🎧Related Episodes
Interviews with Jenny on Saving Time: Jenny Odell Saves Time, and Herself, by Living Beyond the Clock, Making Sense of Time (Jenny Odell), Jenny Odell on Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin
305: Is What You Are Wanting Actually What’s Best For You? With Luke Burgis
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