The Philosophy of Time Management | Brad Aeon | TEDxConcordia

[Applause] [Music] when I was six years old my biggest fear was to get bored I used to make to-do lists every single day so to always have something to do but one day I was watching this documentary on sea turtles and it said that sea turtles can live up to 150 years of age and I realized as a six-year-old kid and I'm probably not gonna live that long I'm gonna die it was such a strange realization don't you feel weird sometimes when you realize that no matter what you do in life still gonna die in

the end so I ran to my mother and asked your mom is it cuter we're all gonna die someday you me dad my friends and she said yes we're all gonna die there's nothing you can do about that and I was terrified I started to cry I cried so hard because of what death meant it literally means the end of existence the end of everything and I wondered what's the point of all this so I turned to my mom still crying and said so why do we work why do I have to work what does

dad have to work so much if he and everybody else are gonna die anyway she never answered my question but that question stuck with me ask myself a lot of questions and I'm sure you do too that's what philosophy is all about asking questions and what could be more important than asking questions about how to use your time probably nothing because time is all we have so naturally you would expect the hold time management movement to be very philosophical after all time management is a concept that started out in philosophy the ancient philosophers were obsessed

with this one very important question how can we use our time in a way that makes our lives meaningful but modern time management is philosophically empty time management books are written by consultants not philosophers it's always about tips and tricks and techniques to get more things done to do things faster to be more productive more efficient and to work better time management has become philosophically empty time management has moved away from his philosophical roots but if we really want to live a meaningful life we have to once again reinforce and philosophy starts with questions here's

a very simple question why do we need to manage time some people might say it's because time is precious very precious so we need to manage it but how precious is time exactly see whenever I introduced myself to people as a time management researcher the first thing people say is oh yeah time management it's that's really important because because time is money time is money every time I hear time is money it reminds me of this conversation I had over coffee with this acquaintance of mine he was a he was a contractor as what we're

talking he looked slightly annoyed and impatient so I asked him Jeff what's going on man everything all right and he said she said I hate wasting my time makes me so so angry it's awesome what do you mean and he said look I make on in 60 dollars an hour that means every hour I spend with you I'm losing 160 bucks I was slightly offended to be honest but it's what he said next that really shocked me he said whenever I'm spending time with my own kids it makes me so angry because yeah i'm spending

time with them but every hour i spend with my kids I'm not making $160 and it's not just an anecdote you can see this everywhere experiments show that whenever people start to think of time as money they become more agitated less happy always in a rush and importantly they get greedy they become less likely to help people out to volunteer or to think about the environment because nothing else matters when you're making out in $60 an hour the real question is is money the real value of time the Roman philosopher Seneca said that if we

think of time as money we're actually valuing our time very cheaply we value our time very cheaply because we think we're we have a lot of it because we think we're gonna live forever but we're not gonna live forever we're gonna die and the moment you realize and I mean fully realized that you're going to die on an $60 an hour it won't mean much time is not money anymore now some people might say that thinking about death is not exactly cheerful maybe but it's very helpful the French philosopher Albert Camus said that the most

fundamental question in philosophy is why shouldn't I kill myself right now it's true why shouldn't kill you why shouldn't you kill yourself right now your answer to that question will remind you what you're truly living for your answer to that question will remind you of the true value of your time because time is not money when you know you're going to die and this is how philosophy helps with time management it helps us ask meaningful questions about time here's another seemingly simple question can you manage time back in college I had this uh.this professor used

to tell me that you can't manage time time management is you can't manage time because there's too much too many things to do too much work to do too many obligations you can't manage time she's to publicly brag about how she never sees her daughter because she has she never has time people admired her because she was so productive but what people didn't know was that her work obligations also made her depressed they cost her a marriage and of course she never really got to know our daughter but what truly pains me is that things

could have been otherwise she could've been all out she could have been alive today and see her daughter grew up but she didn't believe that time could be managed so she never tried whenever I used to drop by her office she would tell me sorry kiddo I don't have time but that was a lie I don't have time is the biggest lie in the history of mankind you know who really didn't have time your great grandparents those guys had no time at all they had to work 12 hours a day every single day it's not

just work everything back then was more time-consuming people didn't have washing machines so they'd have to wash everything by hand they didn't have frozen meals so that to cook everything from scratch and all those things took hours to do back in the days that's why a great grandparents really didn't have time but here's the incredible thing our great-grandparents did not complain about not having time we do it's a paradox we have more time than they did and yet we still complain that we don't have time why because we have more options more freedom to choose

our time options as we please look at how we live today we can shop on Amazon 24/7 any day of the year women can delay pregnancy by freezing their eggs more and more companies offer flexible work schedules we can watch our favorite shows any time I want on Netflix so not only do we have more time but we have also have a lot more flexibility a lot more a lot more freedom to use our time as we please and we still say that we don't have time why the philosopher jean-paul Sartre has said that we

have this tendency to trick ourselves into thinking we're not free because being free to use your time as you please means that you have to make a choice and live with the consequences of that choice that mean that means whatever you do with your time it's on you and that's the scary part it's scary because what if we made the wrong choices what if we're missing out it's this constant fear of missing out would your life have been better had you spent more time with your kids or more time studying or more time partying maybe

we don't want to know that's why we say we don't have time it gives us an excuse it's reassuring but in reality we do have time and time can be managed it's just that we don't have a lot of it so they have to be sacrifices we can't have it all when it comes to time we can either make sacrifices or make excuses but only one of them will allow you to live meaningfully we live in an era of unprecedented flexibility where we actually afford to work less and do more meaningful things with our time

so why don't we and by we I really mean us you me and everybody else in the city because time management is not just about you it's about all of us it's about all of us as a society the way you manage your time has huge consequences for our world what do people say when they don't vote I didn't have time what do people say we didn't read I don't have time why don't people relax go the museum or volunteer I don't have time but this wouldn't be the case if we thought about time management

the way philosophers do by asking questions the right questions instead of focusing on tips tricks and shortcuts so what kind of questions can we ask ourselves well is it reasonable to let you boss call you on weekends is it worth it is it worth your time and buy time I really mean life not money because you're not paying your bosses with some with some commodity you're paying them with your time you're paying them with your life if that's not precious I don't know what is next time you tell a friend you don't have time to

hang out ask yourself if you actually have better things to do or if you're just making excuses because there's a growing sense of isolation in Western societies people feel alone partly because people feel they don't have time to hang out anymore though we do have time so please share it with the people you care about if you can remember if you want to if you want to manage your time meaningfully embrace philosophy and never stop asking questions thank you you