Time for Te-leology
After riding bicycles through the Piney Woods of East Texas, my friend Justin commented on a popular maxim. “You know how they say ‘time is money?'” he asks, sweaty helmet in hand. “I think we have it the wrong way around. Time isn’t money. Money is time.” What he described that day has remained with me since.
The origins of catchphrases can be difficult to identify. Believed to be erroneously attributed to Benjamin Franklin but with earliest evidence pointing to the 18 May 1719 edition of the London-based Free Thinker newspaper [1], the expression “time is money” is stereotypically used to express the idea that failure to use time effectively has financially equivalent ramifications, the point being that money is the ultimate measure of value.
Assuming a free market, money is a subjective representation of value—how much something means to us or someone else. An avid music fan will treasure the handkerchief the lead singer used to wipe their face, while someone disinterested in the band will detest the sweaty fabric.
We can find ways to make more money if we choose to, by earning it, investing it, or printing it (if we’re a national treasury, inflationary impacts aside). In contrast, we cannot make more time. By God’s grace, we have what we have and are left with the choice of how to spend it. We can exchange time for money by paying someone to do a task we either could have done but do not want to or cannot do ourselves, or we can pay another for their specialist skills to avoid incurring the often high cost of acquiring those skills one’s self. Likewise, most of us receive money in exchange for our time and work. Time is the ultimate scarce resource and a common source of contemplation on its use at the end of a day, season, or life.
Adler and van Doren’s How to Read a Book and Ahrens’ How to Take Smart Notes both advocate for the effective use of time and attention, another scarce resource, to achieve a specific purpose in reading or writing: in reading, to ensure the book is read in a manner that supports the purpose of reading the book. [2] Elementary reading may be sufficient for a narrative story, but a robust syntopical reading is required to understand the material and fit it into the context of the reader’s knowledge of other works. In writing: to ensure that notes are written in a way that contributes to the writer’s thinking. Ahrens argues that the main purpose of writing is creative thinking. [3] Similarly, Paul and Elder’s The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools states, “All reasoning has a purpose.” [4] The purpose of the thinking, the reading, or the writing should determine how to accomplish the activity. If this sounds basic, I’m afraid that it might be, and yet becoming good at the basics of life is often where we, certainly where I, struggle.
What I like about this concept of ‘activity with purpose,’ the teleological view, is the potential to apply it to many, perhaps all, activities: what is its purpose and, therefore, what are the appropriate approaches to it? I may take significant time thinking about how I want to get to a destination and plan it in minute detail, or I may punch the address into my phone’s guidance software and take the first option it gives me; it will depend on the purpose and circumstances of my travel, controlling for personality and preference variances.
Yet my errors in the most essential things in life are frequently attributable to neglecting purposes, specifically long-term ones. I fail to consider, “What is the purpose of this discussion? What do I want out of my marriage? What does my child long for out of my parenting? What do my staff want out of their leader?”
To Create or To Consume?
The algorithms powering content delivery services on the Internet are remarkably sophisticated. Very few people know me deeply enough to propose we watch a musical history documentary about the making of the synthesizer sounds on Michael Jackson’s Thriller album. Still, there it is—right in my feed of suggested videos. And, yes, I watched it to the end and loved it.
There have been times when I have followed a “rabbit trail” of content on the Internet, where one thing leads to another, and I’m left with regret at how I have spent my time. On reflection, I suspect this is because the purpose of the activity was not considered. By Paul and Elder’s standards, I had not thought critically about the purpose of my consumption. All three of this week’s book assignments challenged me to consider not only the purpose of a specific reading, writing, or thinking activity but also the “meta-purpose” of activities.
Adler and van Doren state that “television, radio, and all the sources of information and entertainment that surround us in our daily lives are also artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active because we are required to react to stimuli from outside. But the power of those external stimuli to keep us going is limited… if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And when we cease to grow, we begin to die.” [5] Ahrens argues that by writing ideas in our own words, we grapple with the subject matter and are forced not merely to learn content verbatim but to understand it and apply it across contexts using mental ‘scaffolding’. [6]
These reflections spurred my thinking to consider the meta purposes of activities in classes of creation or consumption. How might different activities be part of a creative process that reflects the image of a creator God in his children? How might over-consumption or insufficient high-quality consumption lead to sickness? How might creative practices lead to life and joy? Does this activity give, take, both, or neither?
There is much more to explore on this topic. I look forward to continuing to consider and explore these ideas as I read, write, and think with purpose.
Notes
[1] Damien Villers and Wolfgang Mieder, “Time Is Money: Benjamin Franklin and the Vexing Problem of Proverb Origins, Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship N°34 : 2017, p. 391-404.,” Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 34 (August 7, 2017).
[2] Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 6-10.
[3] Ahrens, Sönke, How to Take Smart Notes (Hamburg, Germany: Sönke Ahrens, 2022), 21.
[4] Richard Paul and Linda Elder, The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, 8th edition, Thinker’s Guide Library (Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), 16.
[5]Adler and Van Doren, How to Read a Book, 336.
[6] Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes, 221-222.
About the Author
Joff Williams
I live to help communities and people discover their identity and purpose by discovering the identity and intent of their Creator. I am Jesus-follower, husband, father, son, sibling, music nerd, recovering IT nerd, just an all-around nerd nerd, and mediocre but happy runner. My vocation involves leading and loving the communities of Mercy Ships, an international hospital ship mission deeply rooted in the love of Jesus.4 responses to “Time for Te-leology”
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Hey Joff! I loved how Adler said something like not all books are worth the same amount of time. Your post makes me wonder how much time goes into doom-scrolling. I don’t know if you have seen President Biden’s farewell address, but he talked about the tech-industrial complex and the control over people they are gaining in our world.
Also, don’t hold out! Drop the link to that documentary on the synth sounds in Thriller
Thanks for commenting, Robert!
A quick look turned up this article: https://tmb.apaopen.org/pub/nn9uaqsz/release/3
“Doomscrolling was also linked to passive social media use, habitual media use, anxiety, poor self-control, and several personality traits.” (Sharma, Lee & Johnson, The Dark at the End of the Tunnel: Doomscrolling on Social Media Newsfeeds, 2022)
What caught my eye here was “passive social media use, habitual media use.” It sure seems like those things would contribute to significant consumption of time.
Also, ask and you shall receive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-_DbUzWlD0&t=1119s
I’d be so interested to know if you have notes that express or remind you of your primary focus for your time, in order of priority? Or are you instinctive that you know you won’t forget and wrongly prioritise?
I feel like it’s been the last few years that I have fully recognised how precious time is and how limited it is. Maybe that’s an age thing; maybe it’s because I often try to fit too much into a day.
Thanks for your provoking thoughts.
Thanks for your comment, Betsy!
Since around 2016 I have been in the habit of keeping a small pocket-sized notebook in which I jot down thoughts, plans and notes. While I haven’t been consistent at journaling my use of time in an intentional format, that would probably give some indication of where I spent my time or attention. I also wonder if looking at it and the periods of absences of entries would be indicators of when I haven’t been intentional with my use of time.