@WayJay
From the book "The Pomodoro Technique" by Francesco Cirillo, on developing a better relationship with time:
"Who hasn’t experienced anxiety when faced with a task that has to be finished by a deadline? In these circumstances, who hasn’t felt the need to put off that task or fallen behind schedule or procrastinated? Who hasn’t had that unpleasant sensation of depending on time, chasing after appointments, giving up what one loves to do for lack of time?
“Remember, Time is a greedy player who wins without cheating, every round!” Baudelaire wrote in his poem “The Clock.” Is this the true nature of time? Or is it only one of the possible ways to consider time? More generally, why do people have such a problem in the way they relate to time? Where does it come from, this anxiety that we’ve all experienced at the thought that time is slipping away?
Thinkers, philosophers, scientists—anyone who’s taken on the challenge of attempting to define time and the relationship between people and time—always have been forced to admit defeat. Such an inquiry, in fact, is inevitably limited and never complete. Few have provided any truly insightful perspectives. Two profoundly interrelated aspects seem to coexist in regard to time:
BECOMING. An abstract, dimensional aspect of time that gives rise to the habit of measuring time (seconds, minutes, hours); the idea of representing time on an axis, as we would spatial dimensions; the concept of the duration of an event (the distance between two points on the temporal axis); the idea of being late (again the distance between two points on the temporal axis).
THE SUCCESSION OF EVENTS. A concrete aspect of temporal order: We wake up, we shower, we have breakfast, we study, we have lunch, we have a nap, we play, we eat, and we go to bed. Children come to have this notion of time before they develop the idea of abstract time that passes regardless of the events that take place.
Of these two aspects, it is becoming that generates anxiety. It is by nature elusive, indefinite, infinite: Time passes, slips away, moves toward the future. If we try to measure ourselves against the passage of time, we feel inadequate, oppressed, enslaved, and defeated more and more with every second that goes by. We lose our élan vital, the life force that enables us to accomplish things: “Two hours have gone by and I’m still not done; two days have gone by and I’m still not done.” In moments of weakness, the purpose of the activity at hand is no longer clear. The succession of events seems to be the less anxiety-ridden aspect of time. At times it may even represent the regular succession of activity, a calm-inducing rhythm."