Technology enables us to do more in a period of time.  A classic example is the washing-machine that requires you to do little more than load your dirty clothes and switch it on rather than laboriously wash, scrub and rinse each item repeatedly.  It costs less time to do the same thing and so we experience time-deflation.  It’s the same as with money: if you can buy two hamburgers today for the price of one yesterday then there has been some deflation.  In these circumstances, it becomes less important to have a large income because the necessities of life have reduced in price, and so you could work less hard, start saving more (but for what?) or buy some of life’s luxuries.  However, the analogy between time and money breaks down at this point, because you can’t reduce your supply of time or save it, you have to spend it.  But advancing technology means nearly everything costs less time and so it gets harder and harder to spend your alloted time.  Many of us react by trying to do more and more diverse activities, and often simultaneously, with the result that we over-compensate for time-deflation and become bankrupt, or burnt out wrecks.

We can cheat technology’s deflating effect by pursuing activities that involve no time-saving technology such as walking, reading, thinking and spending time with our loved ones.  In the last case, the clue is in the phraseology!

BTW – I will be on deep vacation by the time you read this post. Amongst other things, I will be curing my tsundoko by reading the books I bought in Camden Lock Books earlier in the summer [see my post entitled ‘Tsundoko‘ on May 24th 2017].