Valuable Time

Once again; apologies for the lack of posts recently. Some of that is a motivation thing and as I have been quite frank about my inspiration and motivational flow, it should come as no great surprise that there is another great gap between posts. I have however successfully managed to come up with a whole host of ideas that should help to ensure that the posts are more frequent over the course of this academic year.

Having completed my first year at university (and thankfully passing – through some miracle) I went home for my first summer since beginning the course. This was a slightly strange and surreal experience, to go from the stresses and drama of exams to three months of essentially nothing but activities of my choice. Three months of nothing is actually quite a daunting prospect when you sit and think about it – especially for someone who gets bored easily! However, I was fortunate enough to have secured a summer work placement in addition to my job at the local supermarket. So, whilst many of my friends and peers settled in for a long summer of rest, recuperation and relaxation, I went out to work.

This of course started me thinking about the way in which we as individuals value our personal time. After all, we only get one life – yet huge sections of the population rate their satisfaction with their career or employer poorly. Why is it then, that we stand by and allow our time to be swallowed in exchange for (in some cases) comparatively poor wages? How has it become widely accepted that for some jobs minimum wage is acceptable (and who determines that that is the absolute lowest price that our time may be valued at?

In my usual fashion, I began to over-think the issue, it seems strange to me how we place such high value on the material things in life  - but then immediately fail to fully grasp the fact that we do indeed only get one life and that that fact alone ensures that our time is incredibly precious. Who are we to place such an arbitrary value on the hours we spend under the guise of being ‘productive’?

Considering the many thousands of occupations, paid and unpaid alike there are within our society, the concept of time having a specific value has become an integral underpin for the system in which we as a society operate. However the true value of our time is not something we consider – or at least not nearly enough. Is there a difference between the idea of valuable time, and the real world value of time? If so, should we be doing more unpaid work for our community, or working less in the name of enjoying our limited time? Then, there is also the inevitable question of whether changing the perception of time, and the way in which society at large and we as individuals grossly undervalue our own time, is actually possible. I would argue: not really, for the majority of the population with the exception of a fortunate minority. It is impossible for us to simply work less – never-mind stop working altogether. As such, would it be more appropriate to look at some ways in which we can improve the quality of the ‘free’ time that we have. How much of an impact would this have on our overall quality of life I wonder? How different would our world look if we altered the emphasis slightly?

Indeed just as the concept of ‘valuable time’ is interesting, so is that of its counterpart: ‘free time’. One clearly cannot exist without the other. However, in all its denominations, time we (usually) spend doing leisure activities, or with loved ones, pursuing hobbies or otherwise is branded free time, or spare time. The connotations of this are quite hard to escape once you start thinking about them. Particularly as the terms so obviously imply that we should each have a sense of gratitude for any excess of time between our wishes and our responsibilities. Gradually, it has become the case that work and other responsibilities closely entwined with conventional survival have become necessities; and free time has become marginalised. Whilst to an extent this is inevitable, when you honestly ask yourself how many hours you have spent continuing with tasks that are not strictly necessary at work in order to ‘look busy’ or to be seen to be being productive, or add up how many extra hours you put in at work to secure the next promotion that could have otherwise been spent. It becomes quite depressing quite quickly to be honest.

Perhaps it is about time we spent a while looking into the abyss and truly considering our priorities. Or maybe it is just time we plucked up the courage to ask for that raise?

More Soon,

Amber xx