Psychology

The Tyranny Of Time Control

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

The last few months I’d felt stressed about time on the weekends – and sometimes during the week. What was weird was I couldn’t quite put my finger on what had happened or why because there was no identifiable cause. Trying to ask “what’s my priority” over “what’s my schedule” helped, but that stress was there.

Eventually I tried just rearranging my schedule, breaking out of the usual. That sometimes relaxed me, sometimes proved to be more stressful. However, I finally realized that I was trying to align a lot of disparate schedules and opportunities – because our modern times, ironically, give us more options to manage.

We have a lot of freedom, a lot of options, and that can be a pain.

For older folks such as myself, it’s easy to remember very regular schedules of the world. You worked in this time zone. Your job was an 8 hour block. You know about time zones and that affected how you might call people. TV and news was on a schedule barring a VCR.

This wasn’t ideal, but I think we all had a sense of other people’s schedules. If you were watching X show, it was probably Y time. We knew this timezone was ahead, this one behind. There was an unspoken schedule we were on.

As technology advanced we got more freedom from the constraints of time and even space. You could chat with anyone online in MIRC, them chat programs, then Discord. You could timeshift communications quickly with emails. You’d work with people in other countries. Entertainment and information wasn’t in any schedule, but was at your fingertips at all times.

We had more options and I think it can be overwhelming because of two reasons – we have options but still have constraints, and everyone else has options too.

Yes you can chat with people anywhere any time – except there are still time zones. We may have control over our work schedule, but we’re still all on different schedules anyway. You can order groceries any time – but have to check store schedules and delivery times. You have a lot of freedom that suddenly careers into harsh reality.

But we still have options, enough options to become overwhelmed. With so many opportunities, we can become overwhelmed (or underwhelmed if we want to overdo it). More options means more work put into choices and priorities – that collide with the above limits.

But the freedom you have is also freedom others have. So the schedules for people become more unpredictable. One friend is on a gaming binge when another is eating dinner. Another can timeshift their day two hours ahead but they’re in the same timezone. Don’t even start on the fact your family is in three countries, four timezomes, and everyone thinks everyone else is always available.

I don’t think we’ve entirely adjusted to all the options we’ve got AND all the limits we still have or created with time. I’m very sure we’ve become worse at coordinating with people to judge by the complaints I’ve heard. That’s before we take a look at the political, environmental, and economic chaos of the world.

Right now I’ve decided it’s time to do two things.

First, I’ve tried shaking up my schedule. That’s helped me find out what works – and is how I got this insight. Trying new things helps me break out of my habits and challenge ways of doing things.

Second, I’ve tried blocking time out more. By thinking in terms of blocks of time, minimizing distractions, and a bit more planning I feel more focused and get things done. The act of blocking time in turn also makes me think about my schedule.

So far this has helped me. But I wonder how the world is doing . . .

Steven Savage

Thinking With Different Minds

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

As noted many times, I’m interested in history, especially the history of religion and project management. Fortunately my interest in such things has focused on China, which has a long history of written records, and preserved writings on management advice over a thousand years old. We Project Managers have been here forever, everyone needs some anal-retentive worrier who can’t stand to leave things undone.

You think you got canals and great temples without someone like me?

Often in my readings I find how much I relate to people a thousand, two thousand, or more years gone. The same observations, the same issues, the same human condition – and human solutions. There’s so much similar, to the point where I can read about some guy charting grain storage and go “yeah, my man, great job, you update those records, you keep that thing running!”

But among all those similarities, I’d like to talk about differences in how we organize, get things done, and indeed just live with each other.

Yes, I can relate to people thousands of years ago, but they also led different lifestyles than mine. They probably didn’t live thousands of miles away from their family. The seasons meant different things to them with less transport for food and different dwellings. The people I read of might pass by a slaughterhouse casually, or eat food that literally came from next door. They operated on different schedules. NONE of them had to learn what an “Influencer” was or become bitter about it.

They had different minds than me. Yes, we have much in common, but it’s important to remember the differences too.

When I think of this, I think how different we can be sometimes. Now that’s easy to think of the differences between people now and a few thousand years ago. In fact it’s probably good as a lot of us have ideas quite out of date that got handed down over the centuries we don’t question. But there’s more.

Do we have the same minds as someone born a hundred years earlier than us? Fifty? Even ten? How many of us are running around this world trying to interact with people who have different minds than we? How many of us haven’t adapted to the present? For that matter how many lessons are we trying to apply to our current crises that may not be old, but are from different times and different minds?

As we try to solve the problems we face, we may want to ask if we have the wrong minds to do it. If I can speculate on using Agile in pre-Industrial China, we can ask if we are literally the wrong people for the job of running and probably saving the world.

It’s OK. The world has changed a lot. We’ve done some very stupid things in hindsight. It’s OK to admit it. But we have to become different people and that means recognizing we need different minds.

We can reach back and time and learn from people different yet similar to us. We can ask who we need to be now. We can see who we used to be. We can become who we need to be, to have different minds.

Because I’m not sure current us is ready for the job, and we cling mightily to ourselves.

Steven Savage

Using Bitcoin After The Apocalypse

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

“What does the future hold,” is a question we ask a lot. Partially because we’re human and partially because right now we’re in the Polycrisis. I think about it due to my humanity, due to the chaos, due to concern for people, and of course a healthy level of paranoia. I’m not living in the future I was promised or anything close, and I’d ask to see the manager but it’s sort of me.

So what do I think the future is? The future is planning to use Bitcoin after the apocalypse.

I’m not a fan of cryptocurrencies – there’s some interesting technology in there, but overall it’s not so much a money as a kind of stock with little foundation. It’s a kind of social engineering with no foundation but belief. However I do follow news and conversations on crypto as it is part of our current world and affects us. One conversation I followed had someone expressing utter frustration with a crypto enthusiast: said enthusiast said Bitcoin would be great after the apocalypse.

Think of that for a moment. An actual human said that. A person who in theory can drive and hold responsibilities figures that you’ll use Bitcoin when society collapses.

The fall of civilization. You probably don’t have a computer, you probably don’t have the internet, and an entirely electronic currency is your hope for the apocalypse. It was watching faith in gold transferred to faith in the blockchain, completely disconnected from the reality of civilizational crises.

Planning using Bitcoin in the Apocalypse is a perfect summary of where we are now – hoping utter faith in nothing saves us.

We’ve got a world in crises – climate change, political meltdowns, diseases, resource issues, microplastics, etc. Even though I have a lot of faith in humanity, it seems pretty clear we’re in for a hard crash. We need real ideas, real leadership, and real solutions involving material subjects like food, location, weather.

But a lot of people are absolutely enchanted with technical and philosophical bullshit. Crypto of course, which I heard best described as “having a computer do sudokus you use can use to buy heroin.” AI is supposedly going to save us, say the people whose job is to sell us on AI. Meanwhile both technologies suck up technology, resources, and mindshare when we might want to use all that to deal with climate change.

We’re following “leaders” who sound like image board teenagers and 80’s sci-fi novels on repeat, lost in their own worlds. Or maybe we have leaders who are recycling bigotries and biases of the past, while promising we’ll get back to that past even though it existed largely in our imaginations. We’re trying to go back to the 1950’s or the 1850’s or hell, the 1050’s for some people, and few if any of the advocates seem to know anything about real history.

We end up with people who are happy to bring polio back and think advanced technology just happens.

So much of our world is bullshit ideas and bullshit people who aren’t anything, just things we clap our hands for, hoping they’ll be real this time. Believe enough in everything that we know isn’t true and magically we’ll all be saved. The Final Judgment delivered by a god speaking in internet memes and platitudes.

We’re metaphorically hoping crypto will save us in the apocalypse. We’re hoping a teetering pillar of belief and hype will right the wrongs – while it burns real resources and kills real people.

And ultimately, no, it’s not going to work. I watched parts of LA go up in smoke, Arizona has it’s own dangers in 2025, and Florida and its neighbors get rammed with more and more hurricanes annually. We need solutions, we need to prepare, and even the con-men and con-women have conned themselves into acting like it’ll be OK.

Humanity will get through it. But the question is how well, how many, and how long it takes us to establish a functional world. But the answer isn’t hand-wavy, easily exploited memethink.

Steven Savage