Summary: Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell

• The book challenges the dominant view of time as a scarce and linear resource that must be managed and monetized, and shows how it is oppressive and harmful to our well-being and the planet.
• The book proposes alternative ways of experiencing time that are more attuned to the natural rhythms of life, such as the cycles of the seasons, the movements of the stars, the growth of plants, and the aging of our bodies.
• The book urges us to reclaim our time from the forces that exploit it and to use it for what matters most to us, such as creativity, connection, and stewardship.

Saving Time (2023) takes a deep dive into the complicated concepts surrounding time and the multitude of ways it can be experienced. Combining historical research, philosophical ideas, and social commentary, it offers new approaches to perceiving time that can help us learn to truly live in the present while looking toward a more hopeful future.

Introduction: Discover how to “give yourself more time” by changing the ways you perceive it.

Imagine you’re in a library, searching for ways to save time and avoid burnout. The first section you see is full of books about time-management strategies to increase productivity. The second section contains books about the history of time, as well as philosophical theories surrounding it.

Which section would you choose? While it might seem logical to head straight to the first, author Jenny Odell suggests that section two is where the solutions truly lie. In this summary to Saving Time, we’ll delve into the complicated – and often misunderstood – concepts surrounding time, and look at how we can change the ways we perceive it.

We won’t be able to cover all of the complex ideas and research presented in the book. Ironically, that would take far too much time! Instead, this summary will focus on the overarching concepts to help you gain a better understanding of what time really is, the different ways it can be experienced, and how you can save it – in theory at least.

How was the concept of keeping time created?

It’s no small irony that clocks are the modern symbol of time, because – for most of history – there was no need to keep time by them. While ancient civilizations did have devices for sensing the time of day, such as sundials and clepsydras, they had no reason to separate it into numerical parts.

In fact, the process of breaking down time into linear units didn’t begin until the sixth century, when the development of Christian canonical hours specified the eight moments of the day that monks should pray.

Five centuries later, Cistercian monks intensified this practice by using bell towers throughout their monasteries. This new technology would soon catch on and be developed into public and private clocks, spreading rapidly as European towns became centers of power and commerce.

While they were mainly still used for coordination, these mechanical turret clocks helped to conduct trade and signaled the end of a day’s worth of labor. Unlike the bell towers in monasteries, the new clocks were able to mark hours as equal and countable.

The history of time is also deeply entangled with colonialism and struggles for power. It’s no coincidence that marine chronometers were invented in eighteenth-century Britain, just as the colonial power was rising to international dominance.

Beginning in the 1850s, “master clocks” in Greenwich, England, began to send Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) to “slave clocks” throughout the rest of the country via electrical pulses, which allowed all trains to run on the same schedule.

Meanwhile, railway systems in the US and Canada initially had no standardized time zones, which made coordinating them nearly impossible. While helping to design the Canadian railway network, engineer Sandford Fleming developed the idea of a “Cosmic Day.”

According to his strategy, everyone on the planet would use one of 24 time zones – reflecting the 24-hour clock, or what we now refer to as “military time.” In 1884, at the International Meridian Conference, these 24 time zones were officially recognized with Greenwich as the prime meridian: the point from which time would be measured throughout the world.

How much is our time worth?

In 1998, the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics made the controversial decision to require its researchers to clock in and out during their workday. The physicists working at the facility were outraged, stating that the decision was needlessly bureaucratic and conflicted with the ways that research was actually conducted.

This decision would go on to cause an uproar not only within the scientific community, but throughout the world. At the heart of the controversy was the question of what employers are entitled to when they pay their employees – or the concept of “time as money.” In other words, how much is our time actually worth?

In cinema, one of the best representations of this idea comes from Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film Modern Times. In an early scene, Chaplin’s character, The Tramp, frantically works to screw nuts into pieces of machinery at his factory.

Later in the film, the company straps The Tramp into a device called “The Billows Feeding Machine,” which aims to save time by feeding employees while they work – eliminating the need for a lunch break.

The machine ultimately malfunctions, causing a rapidly spinning corn on the cob to repeatedly smash into Chaplin’s face. This serves not only as a hilarious movie scene, but as a commentary on the capitalist idea of “squeezing” as much time as possible out of each employee’s workday.

Many decades later, this issue was revisited during the coronavirus pandemic. With many people working from home, time-tracking systems were used as a way to check on employee productivity.

While some of these systems used self-reporting, others monitored employees’ productivity with screenshots, recordings, and keystroke logging. In a Vox article about remote work, one employee stated that her boss knew every single thing she did during the day – to the point where she felt like she was barely allowed to stand up and stretch.

This relates to Allen C. Bluedorn’s idea of fungible time, which is epitomized by Benjamin Franklin’s famous line, “Time is money.” In essence, time behaves like a currency – just like every penny has an equal value, every second can be interchanged with another second.

But who gets to decide what time costs? And do we all get an equal share of it?

Is time distributed equally?

In much of the modern world, there is a pervasive and ever-increasing mentality that work and productivity should be valued above all else. In the US especially, “hustle culture” leads us to believe that we should constantly be on the grind if we want to have any measure of success in life.

The strongest proponents of this mindset are the “productivity bros” – a group of male content creators who constantly sell the idea that time management and personal policing are cure-all solutions to life’s biggest problems.

Let’s briefly go back to the concept of fungible time. The idea that every person has an equal number of hours, minutes, and seconds is the bedrock of modern time-management strategies. In fact, productivity bros seem to live by the creed that “we all have the same 24 hours in a day!”

But as soon as you begin to poke at this theory, it unravels – as anyone who has had to care for a loved one, lived with a chronic condition, or taken on a large share of housework can attest. Philosophy professor Robert E. Goodin even refers to this suggested equality of time as a “cruel joke.”

And yet, the theory has thrived in modern bootstrapper culture – which lives by the idea that anyone can achieve their goals if they just work hard enough. Funnily enough, the term “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” was originally intended to mean “attempting the impossible.”

The first problem with the equal time theory is the simple fact that certain people have more power and influence over their own time, as well as the time of others. Second, the price at which we sell our time reflects aspects that are often out of our control, such as age, gender, and socioeconomic status.

Long story short, time management boils down to the question of who really controls our lives – and therefore our time.

According to Odell, for individuals, time is less something that’s measured and more a relation of power structures. Each person’s experiences with time depend on where they’re currently seated in the “economy of temporal worth.”

Odell refers to the work of author Sarah Sharma, who notes that our culture’s fixation with time management runs in direct contrast to political definitions of time. In order to reach a true understanding of time, we need to address society’s uneven and deeply biased structures of power.

Until that lofty goal is achieved, Odell offers a simpler solution that can be applied on a more personal level. By acknowledging the ways that experiences of time play out for different people, we can create a new – and in turn, more fair – meaning of the phrase “time management.”

How has our view of time changed?

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically altered the ways that we perceive time, and our place in it. In the early days of lockdown, many people took to social media to vent their frustrations, posting memes and funny tweets about how “time means nothing anymore.”

Days blended together, weekdays and weekends became indistinguishable, and each hour seemed to blur into the next. For Odell, this ambiguity of time relates to the ideas that French philosopher Henri Bergson put forth in his 1907 book Creative Evolution.

According to Bergson, the problem with trying to understand the true nature of time stems from our desire to imagine it as a series of concrete moments that happen side by side in space. Instead of occurring in neat segments, time is a series of overlapping successions, stages, and intensities.

For Bergson, time is more like a duration as opposed to something that’s measurable. It’s a mysterious thing that’s always creating and developing.

A good way to illustrate this concept is through an image of flowing lava. At the front, the leading edge of lava is alive – always moving toward a new destination. But at any point, you can look back and see the path it’s taken, which contains all the histories of the places it’s been.

The increased awareness of time during the pandemic goes hand in hand with rising feelings of dread about the climate. With far more opportunities to stop and observe the world around us, it seems that the “climate clock” is ticking down faster and faster.

Just as with the inequality of time, large structural changes need to take place in order to address climate change and give the world a chance at a better future. In the meantime, Odell suggests two important ways of thinking that can help ease the strain on our minds.

The first – and most important – is to remember that we’re not alone. Although time is experienced differently by each individual in the present, the future belongs to all of us. Worrying about what comes next can be isolating, so we shouldn’t be afraid to share our fears with others.

Second, it can be helpful to remember that, throughout history, many worlds have ended and been born anew. Odell notes that Native American author Elissa Washuta often refers to her people as “post-apocalyptic.” Because of colonization, Indigenous people have lived through many forms of annihilation – but continue to exist and seek to build a better future.

According to Odell, if you don’t want to “kick the can down the road,” it can be helpful to think like those who were never on that road to begin with.

How can we give ourselves more time?

When Odell was young, she came across one of her mom’s fairytale books from the 1970s. It was about a witch who gave a boy a ball of golden thread and told him that pulling the end would cause time to move faster.

Eager to meet each of life’s major milestones – finishing school, getting married, having a child – the boy impatiently pulled the thread. Soon, he found that he had reached the end of his life without truly experiencing any of it.

This slightly terrifying children’s story perfectly ties into the question for this final section: How can we give ourselves more time?

Time-management strategies, like the methods used by productivity bros, might seem to be the obvious solution here. But in reality, they often make the problem worse.

In his book about why time management is ruining our lives, author Oliver Burkeman states that paying close attention to the usage of time ironically heightens our awareness of just how little of it we have. The more you notice time, the faster it seems to slip away.

Capitalizing on this fear of lost time and mortality, the wellness industry produces a neverending line of products designed to help us live longer. The message seems to be that a longer, healthier life is within reach for everyone – as long as they’re willing to put in the work… and money.

The problem with this idea is that it ignores factors like genetic predispositions and socioeconomic circumstances. If someone is living with a disease or disability – or simply can’t afford access to expensive wellness products or even basic health care – then they can’t access the same opportunities to extend their life.

As a solution, Odell suggests that we shouldn’t be concerned with making more time, but with truly living in the time we have. If we spend all our precious moments trying to stretch them as much as possible, are we truly living at all?

In ancient Greek, there were two words used to describe time: chronos and kairos. Chronos relates to linear time, or the steady march of events leading into the future. Kairos, which can be roughly translated to “crisis” – involves “seizing the moment.”

You might think that chronos would be the more stable of the two, while kairos brings about anxiety and uncertainty. But when it comes to thinking about the future, Odell suggests that living in kairos is the key.

With life changing so quickly and an uncertain future ahead, kairos offers new possibilities and opportunities to imagine something different. By changing the ways we perceive time, we can embrace the fact that we have no control over it – and begin to truly live in the present.

Summary

Living in a world that seems to change by the minute, it’s easy to get swept up in the concept of “saving time.” After all, modern demands for productivity can make it seem as if there are never enough hours in the day. Pair this with an ever-increasing sense of dread about the future, and it can get overwhelming.

But there’s a solution.

On a structural level, collective changes need to be made so that time is distributed fairly and equally – regardless of external factors like gender, race, or economic status.

On a community level, it’s important to remember that although everyone experiences time differently, we aren’t alone in our worries – especially when it comes to the future.

On a personal level, we can each work to change the way we perceive time. By accepting that time isn’t something to be measured, but something to be experienced, we can relinquish control and just be.

In the end, our biggest concern shouldn’t be to live longer and do more. The ultimate goal is really just to be more alive in each moment we’re given.

About the author

Jenny Odell is a multidisciplinary artist and author. Her first book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy was the New York Times bestseller. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Sierra magazine, and other publications. She lives in Oakland, California.

Genres

Science, Motivation, Inspiration, History, Philosophy, Society, Culture, Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Essays, Productivity, Mental Health, Personal Development, Social Science, Business, Economics, Environmental Economics, Environmentalism, Popular Culture in Social Sciences

Table of Contents

Introduction: A message fro the Meantime
Chapter 1: Whose Time, Whose Money?
Chapter 2: Self Timer
Chapter 3: Can There Be Leisure?
Chapter 4: Putting Time Back in Its Place
Chapter 5: A Change of Subject
Chapter 6: Uncommon Times
Chapter 7: Life Extension
Chapter 8: Halving Time.
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Credits and Permissions

Review

Saving Time is a book that challenges the dominant conception of time in the modern, industrial world, where time is seen as a scarce resource that must be managed, measured, and monetized. The author, Jenny Odell, argues that this view of time is not only oppressive and alienating, but also harmful to our collective well-being and the planet. She traces the historical origins of this view of time to the colonial and capitalist projects that imposed a standardized clock time on diverse cultures and ecosystems, and shows how it continues to shape our lives today through work, leisure, technology, and media.

Odell proposes alternative ways of experiencing time that are more attuned to the natural rhythms of life, such as the cycles of the seasons, the movements of the stars, the growth of plants, and the aging of our bodies. She draws inspiration from pre-industrial cultures, ecological cues, geological timescales, and personal stories to illustrate how time can be a medium of possibility, creativity, and connection. She also explores how different temporalities can coexist and enrich each other, such as the stretchy quality of waiting and desire, the sudden flashbacks of memory, and the slow unfolding of pregnancy. She urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life and to resist the pressure to conform to a single, linear, and productive time.

Saving Time is a provocative and inspiring book that invites us to rethink our relationship to time and to imagine a more humane and hopeful way of living. Odell writes with clarity, passion, and humor, weaving together insights from philosophy, history, psychology, art, and literature. She also shares her own personal experiences and observations as an artist and writer who has experimented with different ways of relating to time. The book is full of vivid examples and anecdotes that illustrate her points and make them relatable. The book is also beautifully designed, with illustrations, photographs, charts, and diagrams that complement the text.

The book is not a self-help manual or a productivity guide. It does not offer easy solutions or quick fixes. Rather, it is a cultural and political critique that challenges us to question the status quo and to seek alternatives. It is also a call to action that urges us to reclaim our time from the forces that exploit it and to use it for what matters most to us. The book is not only about saving time, but also about saving ourselves and our world.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who feels dissatisfied with their current experience of time or who wants to explore different ways of being in time. It is a book that will make you think, feel, and act differently. It is a book that will save you time.