Can We Be At Peace With Time
so you came to
listen to my speech that’s very nice
thank you i want to give you a little
gift to start with
i want to offer you some time
20 seconds to be exact and during those
20 seconds
you can do whatever you want you can
check your phone
you can look around you wait for me to
start my speech
feel free to use it as you want ready
let’s start
all right i hope you enjoyed it i will
ask you one more thing before i start is
please remember what you did during
those 20 seconds
let’s get started do you feel at peace
with time
maybe a simple question for some but a
very difficult question for most
so let me go with a more simple one
what day is it today friday
i hope this one everybody got it but is
it
that simple you know a few days ago i
was on the phone with one of my friends
who had been working from home since the
pandemic started
and we were making plans to meet each
other and suddenly my friend was like
on thursday and sorry what you mean on
thursday today is thursday
i was like no no no no today is tuesday
you know don’t worry today is tuesday
what happened is that my friend who had
been working remotely
for the past few months he was lost to
his time
for him days felt like weeks
weeks felt like days and this happened
despite having time displayed virtually
everywhere around him
on his phone on his tv even on his
fridge
and the last time i checked the
definition of time has not changed
recently
once a count is still defined as 9
billion
something period of the radiation of the
cesium 100 statistry
now what happened is that in the past
few months our perception of time has
been
radically challenged most of us had to
face
significant changes in our daily life in
our routine
in those markers of time and as a result
we lost our sense of time
but did we really lost it maybe we just
came back to a more
original a more primitive sense of time
inside us
after all for centuries time was simply
the expression of nature
days and nights summer and winter
time was the daily activities
the cosmic processes the cyclic
repetition of events
fire burns woods irremediably
in the same way time consumes our body
irremediably
that was the view for our ancestor and
for sure
some of the most educated people had a
concept
of historical time but for the majority
time was essentially a physical process
closer to today an invention came to
change that perception
the train and in its country of origin
britain in the early 19th century you
have to imagine that there was a hundred
of different time zones
coventry time being one minute and 30
seconds ahead
of birmingham time itself 14 minutes
behind greenwich time
can you imagine making a trained
timetable at that time
it was simply a nightmare and as a
result
time had to become this synchronization
tool
time became a dimension with very clear
position in it
later on during the industrial
revolution
capitalism started to assign value to a
unit of time
time produces value
then you know you should organize it
optimize it rationalize it
with this emerge time management
consulting productivity tools and so on
finally time became money maybe you knew
all of this
you knew all of those elusive aspects of
time
but did you ever get the chance to
experience it
and i think what happened in the last
few months gave us that very rare chance
whether during a lockdown during a two
weeks current team at home
suddenly time does not have to be that
precious resource that we have to
manage save use wisely
time does not even have to be a
synchronization tool
time can be what you want and you can
make time the way you want
well it’s not that simple
i do wish we would have that super power
of shaping our time perception
as we see fit but there is something at
play here
our deep and personal time orientation
preference so for instance my friend who
was working from home
he would wake up at 2 a.m start to work
get very lost
and have this very disturbed pattern of
life while some other
could easily manage a more regular
pattern of life
and for sure part of this is their own
constraint
but part of this is very much their own
preference
so what do i mean by preference
we all have different personality traits
so for instance here in this room some
of us will be more
extrovert liking to meeting new people
while some other can be more introvert
time orientation preference can be
understand as
one of our trait of personality
and so that means some of us here in
this room
see time as this flow moving forward
inevitably precisely with events taking
place successively
but some other can see time as something
intangible
surrounding us like air events happening
here
there or simultaneously and there is a
name for this
polychronicity this term was coined by
an american anthropologist
eduard hall in the 60s and
edward hall would be speaking about
polychronic culture
he would see this very much as a
cultural aspect
but the most recent research tends to
show that it’s very much an
individual preference and so
we can also wear the scale and on that
scale
on one side you would find the
polygraphs
those who value multitasking who like to
juggle with tasks
who go with the flow who hate planning
those people would say things like i
live
for the moment but on that other extreme
of that scale you would find the
monochromes
those who feel the absolute necessity of
having
every minute of their life planned and
skilled in advance
those who cannot support the idea of not
knowing what they will do tomorrow
and so here is where we can do something
about
during this uncharted territory of our
epoch
but for this you need to understand
where you stand
on that scale there is actually many
tests
out there to measure your polychronicity
attitude
but i would argue you don’t need those
do you remember the little gift i gave
you at the beginning of the talk
what did you do during those 20 seconds
did you jump on your phone that would
maybe put you more towards the polygram
site
did you wait for me to start my speech
that might
put you more on the monochrome side but
more importantly
what was your desire at that time
did you wish to jump on your phone but
you didn’t do it because people were
looking at you
your phone were out of battery that
desire
that wish put you to the polygram site
so with this in mind we can practice a
bit of what i would call
time mindfulness the idea is being
mindful about your feelings
towards time the last time you had to
multitask juggle with multiple things at
the same time
how did you feel about it
did you feel okay did you enjoy it did
you feel very excited about it
those degree put you more and more
towards the polygram’s end
on the other hand if you were not okay
with it
feeling uncomfortable hated it really
really want to do everything you can to
not have to multitask again
that is putting progressively towards
the monocron’s end
so what can you do once you understand
this once you understand where you are
on that scale
things become very simple after all just
align
your action to your preferences
you hate planning just throw away that
cannondale
you actually feel the need of planning
there is a thousand of apps on your
phone that can help you for that
i could stop here but i think we can all
feel that it’s
slightly more complex than this i want
to invite you to look at something here
this is the result of a personality test
i took a couple of years ago
and more specifically it’s my
extraversion level
and if we zoom we can see that i’m
definitely leaning towards the introvert
site
and you can check but public speaking
does not rank
very high in the list of preference for
an introvert
it is fairly stressful
very uncomfortable and yet here i am
putting myself through that ordeal of
public speaking
and on the top of that i’m advising you
to align your action to your preference
you could as well make the conclusion
that i’m simply a big fraud here
that would be fair but i think there is
something more to see here
once you understand where you stand on
that scale i was sharing before
it’s important to also see that we
cannot always
align our action to your preference
sometimes we do have to do things that
goes against
our own preference whatever your
motivation is
we have to acknowledge the gap
between the action we take in our own
preference being mindful of the
difficulty that we all
face of walking through that gap
and pushing ourselves beyond our own
preferences
being mindful about is for ourselves but
as well for the others
whether it’s that polygrams who hate
planning
but has to organize something for work
for his own order day
or for that monograms who actually
has this very deep need of having
everything organized in advance and who
suddenly
needs to go with the flow have to make
last minute change and feel deeply
uncomfortable about it
so let me ask you again do you feel at
peace with time
remember that time is not defined
by our surrounding circumstances
not defined by the dictate of the
society
time is defined only by your own
preference
and yes that means here for each of us
time is different everyone has a
different definition of time
which also means in order to do things
together we do have to agree
compromise on a command definition of
time
but that should not prevent us to be
mindful
of the gap we have to walk to
perform actions towards this compromise
this agreed action of
definition of time and that should not
also prevent us to remember that
there is so many other moment in life
where you can absolutely enjoy
time the way you like it the way you
prefer it
thank you