Saving Time

by Jenny Odell

Busy = good. In a study of “conspicuous busyness,”98 the sociologist Michelle Shir-Wise finds that irrespective of work-life balance, busyness can become a lifelong performance of productivity, where “not presenting oneself as [busy] may be construed as evidence of an inadequate and unworthy self” (or, as Macfadden might have had it, “not a real man nor a complete woman”). We are taught from the beginning that faithfully squeezing the most value out of your twenty-four hours, “steady as time,” is what a good person does; constantly expanding, pursuing opportunities, and getting ahead in every arena of experience is what a good life means. But if work inhabits the social unconscious, it is work according to a historically specific ideal: fast, muscular, unflagging, and white. Recognizing how deeply certain concepts of speed, efficiency, and progress are woven into our culture is yet another way of understanding Brittney Cooper’s argument that “white people own time.”