If time is a construct, why is this the lifestyle we’ve constructed?
I have a friend who won’t stop side hustling.
To be clear, he is not a good friend or even an online friend; he’s a former gym basketball friend, meaning I know him slightly more than my mailman and have a scouting report for how to guard him (can shoot from deep with limited visibility, force him to put it on the ground and try not to get beat to the rim, he’s quick).
This friend (let’s call him Joe) is very sociable, with a winning smile and a self-deprecating sense of humor, which has made him a top salesman at a cell phone carrier for several years. I imagine that job is easy and fun for him. But I guess that’s the problem, because he won’t stop trying to develop a side hustle. A side hustle he wants to make him famous and/or rich?
First it was stonks. He started showing charts from his computer monitor on Instagram and allegedly made bank from the stock market. Hit him up to learn more. Cool, fine, pretty typical arc there for a young man with a little brain power and solid internet skills.
But then he pitched making AI reels on Instagram for money. Then it was being a fitness influencer who showed you how to lift. Then a general lifestyle influencer. Then a videographer. It seems like all this guy does is try to go viral with a side hustle. His fiancé has side hustles, too. I bet you know a couple like this. It is not atypical.
And that’s the whole problem. What happened to leisure? What happened to working to live, not living to work? Where did all of our downtime go?
Of all the things modern capitalism has robbed of us, time is the biggest loss of all. We don’t have time for anything anymore. No time to relax, no time to wait in traffic, no time to finish cleaning our house, no time to take a full lunch break, no time to sit at home, no time to play video games, no time to post on Instagram, no time, no time, no time.
I’m not saying we don’t waste time. We all do. Hell, I’m “wasting time” right now by writing this blog post instead of one of the many work tasks I have on the to-do list. My to-do list is one of the funniest things in the world – a list of tasks that never ends, like bureaucratic Sisyphus. I check things off the to-do list during the week, but only when I’ve opened the list to add something new to it. At some point, the semester just ends – the to-do list does not. Some things just never get checked off.
I think about this often. Don’t get me wrong: I love my job. Bury me in the State Hornet newsroom. But I have a list of tasks that seems to never end. And who the hell am I? Ultimately, I’m a professor at a state school in California; one of 22 similar state schools. It’s a great school, Sacramento State: where I’m one of several thousand employees. And we all have never-ending to-do lists. Which means we never have any time. But to what end? What is all this crushing productivity leading up to?
Burnout, most of the time! Something I’m all too aware of. It’s the most common scourge in the office work environment. You give too much of yourself until you reach a breaking point. And then, what’s the answer? Usually, to take some time off.
Feels like we’re adding an extra step here, doesn’t it? We never have any time, until we reach the point that we are forced to take time.
Many young professionals have already come to this realization, and we try to take appropriate breaks to ensure our continued sanity (and productivity). But the to-do list doesn’t go anywhere. Those work tasks are still going to need to get done; just not during a vacation day.
I have fond memories of Disneyland before it became prohibitively tiresome and expensive to spend a few days there, especially of the “New Tomorrowland.” Or rather, the New New Tomorrowland (second time they tried this gimmick). The revamped “New Tomorrowland” opened in 1998 and was “state-of-the-art” for about three months. In hindsight, it would have been impossible (and very expensive) for Disney to keep up with the pace of new technologies in its theme park attractions, especially for an entire land. But damned if it didn’t seem like Blade Runner in 1998.
That was probably the last time that technology was looked at with hope. In those days, people argued that technology would free up so much of our time, to pursue other interests. It seems like such a quaint idea now, doesn’t it? As if corporations would use robots to pay us well and give us more time off. Like The Jetsons.
Did we all forget The Jetsons is a cartoon?
I guess we never found out how much George Jetson paid for Rosie the robomaid, or what the lease options are for his rocket. But shows were a lot simpler back then. You didn’t have to wait all season for the star of Surf Dracula to ride a surfboard. There were no Wikis devoted to M*A*S*H*, Facts of Life or Saved by the Bell.
Instead of more free time, we have less than ever. Without anyone realizing it, tech corporations plundered our free time for labor. Thanks to grind culture, you’re supposed to have a side hustle. Why would you spend your free time relaxing or pursuing hobbies when you could be making money? How else will you afford the fancy things you want to buy?
Few people argue that you should be a full-time DoorDasher or Uber driver; but plenty of people do it “in their free time.” It’s a convenient side hustle for so many – but why should you need to have a side hustle? Again, doesn’t it feel like we’re adding an unnecessary step?
Without free time, we all start to become the same. Our lives become less interesting and we gravitate toward whatever media is available: social media memes, funny videos, the latest streaming show or movie. We lose the ability to explore our inner weirdo, to figure out what we’re really interested in; because we don’t have time to do so. Whenever we have a second, we want to consume some fun, easy content quickly: I don’t want to watch True Detective Season 1 on my lunch break. And so our content gets dumber and we are all dumber for it. Where does it end?
More and more it feels like we’re speedrunning the movie Idiocracy – and this is not an original idea. The creators of the movie themselves know they gave humanity too much credit. “I should’ve made it 10 years later and set in the present,” said the movie’s creator, Mike Judge. That interview was NINE years ago. Doesn’t seem like things have gotten better in the meantime.
More and more, I find myself slowing down – on purpose. I think it has something to do with what I wrote above. I don’t want to just rush from one thing to the next thing, just to move on to yet another thing. What is the point of doing all these things, and in such a hurry? Who are we racing?
I think most people are racing something; or rather, racing away from something. A lot of people stay busy so they don’t have to sit with their thoughts, their demons, their relatives, their partners, their kids. And I get that, too – no shade intended.
But society and our social apps are always pushing us to keep moving, to keep scrolling forever onto the next thing. We spend so much time on these apps, we just started naturally complying and turning other parts of our lives into an endless algorithm. Scrolling into infinity.
As I concluded in my last blog post, technology isn’t going to go backwards and this is just how things are now. Life isn’t going to slow down. My recommendation: force it to. Force some downtime and slowness back into your life. It’s not a novel or new observation, but maybe you haven’t realized how much you were rushing until now.
I’m reminded how many former social media employees are now living luddite lives in secluded places, far away from Silicon Valley, apps and algorithms. Their biggest piece of advice? Never engage with social media – there is nothing good there. They have slowed things down quite a bit.
There’s definitely a lesson there, one we should all probably listen to. But what good is downtime if I can’t scroll Twitter?