The Fortnightly WEEK TWELVE, SEMESTER ONE, 2025
16TH MAY
TIME CONFETTI
Has modern life changed our relationship with time?
Isabella Fung
I recently got my first ever watch. It’s been a game As academic Ashley Whillans says, ‘leisure has never changer. No longer do I have to fish out my phone from been less relaxing’. The obvious culprit is technology. my bag, check my messages, check my emails, check Yes, it has gifted us more time by giving us agency over my socials, check my to-do lists, have an inevitable where, when and how we work/study, but it has also little doomscroll, flick through my camera roll, put my reduced the quality of that time (and somehow made it phone away, only to realise I didn’t do the one thing I feel like we are working all the time). This irony is known got it out for. What was it again? Oh yes, checking the as the ‘autonomy paradox’. time. But of course, technology is a product of our society. I was reluctant to get the watch at first, as I didn’t want Hustle culture, glorification of being ‘busy’ and the to be aware of every minute ticking by; I was hoping I monetisation of hobbies, are also to blame (thanks could prolong the vaguely endless sense of time a capitalism). Terms like ‘hardworking’ and ‘early riser’ child has, but in reality, I was instead functioning in a have moral baggage. It is seen as a good, virtuous thing cloud of amorphous dread. Because, unfortunately, to transform every minute into productivity. When given modern life is obsessed with time. Sectioning if off, the opportunity for free time, it feels… wrong. As chopping it up into segments, hunting down every last Schulde says, leisure time feels ‘selfish’; something we skerrick like a bounty hunter; all to squeeze out every must ‘earn’ by ‘getting to the end of a very long to-do second in the name of productivity… list’. If I reply to emails whilst on the bus, I can save 10 mins More sinister still, are the underlying socioeconomic at home, which I can then use to meal prep, so I have factors; gender, race and class, which determine who is 30 mins extra on Monday to catch up with my friends most affected by time confetti. Schulde argues women, (maybe two at a time to get it over and done with) to especially those in caretaker roles, suffer more than complain about how I just ‘Don’t Have Any Time…’ Like men. ‘Women have never had a history or culture of every symptom of modern life, someone has given it a leisure’, she says, arguing that as women juggled cute name. relentless domestic labours, ‘men enjoyed long, These fragmented pockets of time (in between uninterrupted hours of leisure. And in that time, they classes, on public transport, waiting for the kettle to created art, philosophy, literature’. boil, before bed, after work) are called ‘time confetti’, a term coined by author Brigid Schulde. She explains I think the reality is, that even given the time, I won’t be that even when we have time, whether that be for writing a modern-day Odyssey. It would be nice just to productivity or leisure, it is not in one continuous block sit and do nothing. Sometimes I fantasise about but split up by constant interruptions: text messages, stomping on my mobile phone like it’s a crunchy autumn work emails, sudden remembrance of deadlines, leaf, logging out of MyLo (forever), and cutting ties with mentally adding things to to-do lists. On and on it goes every person I have ever known. Finally, I’ll rip off my ad nauseum. new watch and throw it into the sea, and, hopefully, I’ll This results in multitasking and frequent ‘context be happily oblivious to the hour of the day, whilst I enjoy shifts’, reducing productivity and leading to one the feeling of all the fragments of time sticking back feeling overwhelmed, burnt-out, scatterbrained and together. exhausted.