In Bowling Alone, the exhaustive reference on the apparent decline of American community, Robert Putnam considers and rejects the idea of “lack of time” as a significant factor. If anything, people who have less time are the kind of busy people who get involved in everything. But what I found more startling is his claim that we are not actually any busier today than say 30 years ago.
Speaking from personal experience, I find I barely have time to read his book. But, on the other hand, reading and writing are some of the few things I can make time for these days.
It may well be that we have an equal amount of non-work time now, but it is non-contiguous and inconvenient. I have a 10-month old and a 2-year old, and my wife stays home to raise the kids. So, when I am not at work, I’m either en route or at home spelling much deserved relief. Our “free time” begins around 9pm when the second baby goes to bed. Then we have until about 7am if we are lucky and are not awakened at 3am due to teething or whatever it is that has interrupted the “bliss” or both babies sleeping through the night.
Nevertheless, when properly motivated, you find the time. I should be asleep now, but wanted to write something today to keep this blog going. I often read on the train or late at night instead of TV. To keep up with my cycling hobby, I commute to work whenever I can, although the ride is long, cold and dark now. Occasionally I find time to run at 5am or so. When I was training for a marathon (pre-2nd baby) I did almost all my runs at 5am, before the baby woke up.
There is no such thing as free time; I could write a book on the parenting perspective, but I think how it is relevant is that you value time more. But most of the trade offs you can make revolve around sleep or lack thereof. If I wanted to go to a weekly 7pm community meeting…that requires a direct trade off of having my wife’s double-duty day go on for 12+ hours.
On the other hand, my job is not a “time card” kind of job. When I need to, I do personal things from the office, as I’m sure everyone else does. The trade off is that we’re all expected to be responsible and thinking about work 24×7, so if I need to fix a problem at work at 3am, there is no official “comp time”; it is just a part of my job.
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