Spontaneity has been in a steady decline in the last 400 years. By 1700s most clocks only had an hour hand, in 1700s they started having minute hands, and from 1800s onwards second hands. Now you’re locked into a culture of minutes and seconds

You used to arrange your time and life according to the seasons, moods, large chunks of time dedicated to a goal that kept your focus. You were attuned to the natural circadian rhythm of night and day, weather, family and community. Life might have been much rougher and demanding in some ways but was kinder in others. Then the industrial revolution came along and PR-ed the daylights out of the word “revolution” to portray it as something beautiful, good, as progress and betterment for all, but the price was a rigid structure you had to abide to. Your days were not yours any more but they belonged to the hand of the clock. The industrial clock was the greatest weapon for restructuring and building of a zygote of a different society and the race begun.

How much time have you spent learning time management by now? How highly do you regard time and do you consider yourself a cog within it that will justify the time it has been given by being a hyper productive machine that can only function within tightly packed schedules? Do you feel proud when you cross all of the things of your to do list? Have you felt the guilt of “not doing” while you were genuinely resting in order to be able to continue? How long is your attention span?

You live in a schedule society where you’re never taught how to find balance but are aptly incentivized to give your time and attention to thousand little things throughout the day. You consider yourself successful when you reach the point of “I don’t have the time to…” because filling up all time slots somehow become equated with accomplishment. “Busy” is a badge you proudly wear and show to people. You’ll speed up more, search for apps and products that will shave seconds of your chores in order to feel better and repeat the process. This is not sustainable, you can’t just keep pushing the throttle forever while shunning the value of (unscheduled) spontaneity, randomness and folly as some hippie like dreamscape of unproductive waste of life. Never before have we been at a place where free time is not free anymore but also needs to be scheduled, where you’ll plan your spontaneity and have itineraries for something that was supposed to be free exploration. We’ve learnt to need the safety of the ticking clock, because if each tick and tock is planned that means that you’re safe, in control and doing it #likeaboss. Well no, it means you’re a slave. It is well known that we like security roughly double that we like a risk (that might even be rewarding). given the choice you’d much rather stay “in control” and “control” the day the clock ticks away then let go and just … be for a while.

Your attention was not made to flitter about like an ADD humming bird. You were made to stay in the mood, to soak things up, process them, get into flow states, create, progress and learn at your own pace. Conversations were not meant to be led in minutes but as a free rolling delving into the other, you were not meant to hide from adventure and unpredictability behind ” busy” .How many of these things are really necessary and how many are you doing because you’re afraid with being left with undesignated blocks of time that might be ravaged by chaos, randomness or… peace?

For your own sanity, plug out of the infinite loop of speeding up here and there. Make no plans, have no agendas, do nothing and just be with your person and people you love. Let the things you encountered and dealt with ferment, change and settle inside in their own time, don’t force it. There are times when others depend on you when there are interactions which need to pledge allegiance to the clock, but not always. Find space to remove yourself from schedules -if you want to stay home alone and cry something out – do it; if you want to take a walk with a friend, a spouse a dog and just potter about the meadow talking nonsense- do it; if you want to soak in the tub singing show tunes until the cows come home – do it. You need to be free to be able to truly be productive and useful to the schedule society. Sometimes you’ll need to hide clocks to not resent the ticking.