<em>How to Keep Time</em>: Try Wasting It

Co-hosts Becca Rashid and Ian Bogost explore our relationship with time and how to reclaim it. Why is it so important to be productive? Why can it feel like there’s never enough time in a day? Why are so many of us conditioned to believe that being more productive makes us better people?

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The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Becca Rashid: So, Ian, when I sent you that voice note yesterday, I just wanted to let you in my head a little bit.

Rashid field tape: Hello, Ian. Alas, I’m waiting at the bus stop, and it seems it will never come.

Rashid: A small glimpse into how anxious I am just waiting for anything.

Rashid field tape: I don’t know what to do. Do I just start walking? Do I give up? Do I walk to the Metro?

At this point, who really knows? It’s been probably four minutes. Oh!

Ian Bogost: It was only four minutes, Becca. It’s not very much time.

Rashid: It’s embarrassing, and I’m standing there, and while I’m waiting I’m switching between two modes, of like, I should be making the most of this time. Let me read that article my friend sent me. Or check my emails.

Or, like: This is insane. It’s only been four minutes. I should be a bit more mindful. But I know that I don’t want to be wasting my time just standing there.

Rashid: I’m Becca Rashid, producer of How to Keep Time, and I’m here with my co-host, Ian Bogost.

Bogost: Hey, Becca.

Rashid: Hey, Ian. A lot of your writing and reporting here at The Atlantic is about technology and all the ways it’s changed how we understand ourselves and the people around us.

But I also think about how much tech has changed our relationship with time.

Bogost: Technology tends to make things faster.

Trains and airplanes get you places faster; factories and machines build things faster.

But communications technologies—like telephones and the internet and such—allow us to send and receive information faster. And a lot more frequently, too.

Rashid: And all those emails and texts and posts and notifications give us more stuff we can do. And it makes it easier to do something all the time, right? That makes it harder to tolerate wasting time—just doing nothing, or being alone with your thoughts.

Bogost: Oh gosh, it’s so true, Becca. You know, your laptop, smartphone—all of those devices make it easier to get more done. Work, socialize, or do banking, or kind of anything at all.

So on one part, we’re more efficient but continue to feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day. And you know, Becca, in your last season, you talked about the difficulty of building meaningful relationships. And when it comes down to it, most people just need more time to do that kind of thing.

But even when we do have enough time, we don’t