Ask any schoolchild how many hours are in a day and the response—24—will come quick and easy. But ask Jenny Odell, an artist and writer based in Oakland, California, and she may have a different answer.
As Odell sees it, time is “stretchy.” While the atomically calibrated clocks that regulate human civilization tick steadily forward, our own temporal experience follows a personalized cadence: It slows down in some moments, speeds by in others. When we lose touch with this rhythm, Odell argues, time slips from our grasp, leaving us with a persistent feeling that we’ll never have enough of it.
Odell’s best-selling 2019 book, How to Do Nothing, urged people to reclaim their attention from extractive tech corporations. Her new book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, examines the similarly pressing contemporary problem of time scarcity. In an era marked by collective exhaustion and skepticism about traditional work structures, Odell invites her readers to imagine what making good use of their time might look like—and how “good” can mean something other than “productive.” Once we stop accounting for our time like currency, she promises, it will become inexhaustible.
One piece of advice you offer in Saving Time is: “Experiment with being mediocre.” What do you mean by that?
I’m addressing a reader who might feel like a perfectionist in arenas of life where it’s not actually necessary in order to have a meaningful life. There are cases in which you’re trying to live up to standards that aren’t yours, or aren’t helping you feel alive in the world. So actually, you’re just punishing yourself. If you feel like you are an overambitious, perfectionist, anxiety-ridden person who is working yourself to death, try adjusting the goalposts a little bit. Then, I’d suggest that you think about goals entirely differently. Maybe it’s not about goalposts anymore, it’s about meaningful encounters. Which is a goal in a way, but not something that you could optimize for or punish yourself for not achieving.
I think most readers of this book will find your skepticism of productivity culture intuitively sensible. But trying to scale back the demands on one’s time or opt out entirely can feel quite difficult, even impossible. What would you say to someone who has a demanding job or childcare needs?
There’s a difference between somebody who doesn’t have time because they are not in control of their time in a literal way—you are on someone else’s schedule; you can only afford to live x number of miles from the place where you work, so the commute is nonnegotiable—and someone who feels like they have to do stuff. This pressure can feel very real. It feels external to you. I know, because I felt it. There is a cost to not doing it—but it’s a social cost, or the cost is not as straightforward.
Between these two people there’s a gray area. For example, an adjunct arts professor is technically self-employed, but in order to continue to be employed, you have to appear like a very productive artist. The distinction is not always a clear one, and the same person can go from one category to the other. But it’s an important distinction to make, because it can be frustrating for someone in the first situation to see people in the second situation complain about not having time.