Time-warped

We have never been as busy as much as we are today.  The feeling of constantly running on the treadmill and yet not moving an inch from where one was, is a feeling that grips us all. And this is irrespective of our age or life stage. Ask a 70 year old single householder or a 30 something mom or a 10-year-old child – how they are?

The standard answer to that question...is no longer…I am fine. Some hint to the 'busy life' is always part of the answer. And if busy was not enough, we have now created for ourselves a situation, which we describe as super busy.

Busy helps us feel important. Busy gives us a sense of purpose. Busy camouflages the things we don’t want to see and hear. Above all, busy has become aspirational value in today’s times. We want to be busy. Old fashioned are people who have just one-single plan for the day. That doesn’t suggest efficiency or the optimal use of time. The frenzy with which people think and talk about time – gives one the impression that is it becoming more valuable than even money. And perhaps rightly so – one can quadruple the amount of money one earns in an hour but cannot do nothing about the number of hours available to us in a day.

So we try to make the most of every little unit of time available to us. Use every minute and second efficiently. We read while we commute, talk to someone while we cook, catch up on Facebook and the TV news at the same time, use that minute at the traffic signal to message someone, respond to an email while waiting at the bank or at the dentist, we even take our phones into the bathroom with us. No one sits idle anymore. 

Brands that weave into people’s life (without warranting us to make time for them) have become relevant given such a context. WhatsApp is a case in point. Think about it, it is difficult to quantify the time you actually spend using WhatsApp. It’s a constant companion through the day yet it doesn’t give anyone the feeling that their time is being eaten away. Infact quite the contrary, people feel they can make the most of their spare time thanks to multi-utility, ubiquitous apps like WhatsApp. It is not surprising that the service has a billion customers world over.

Time is and has always been an elusive idea to man. Something created by man that now controls the creator. In an attempt to maximize the use of time, the more we fragment time, the lesser we feel we have of it. Then again, our notional sense of time varies with how fast or not the clock ticks in our own mind. Its ironical like the notion of time, even the notion of time-scarcity is man-made and while on one hand we create the feeling of scarcity for ourselves, on the other we gravitate towards solutions that would help us slow down the clock.