PREFACE: WHAT IF WE MADE TIME?

Every week I read the weekend supplement of my newspaper to follow the story about the daily rush of families. It is refreshing to read how others use time to their advantage. It crosses my mind that you have to give it to people: using time requires creativity, flexibility, customisation, resilience and choices. And that includes trial and error.

Thinking about time is mostly done in the short term. On a daily basis, when looking for solutions to the puzzle. We only think about time more thoroughly or in the long term in crisis situations, because we have to. Time becomes an issue when we feel that the balance between our work and private life does not align with our values, when a controlling manager puts pressure on our time, when an unsustainably high work rhythm undermines the quality of our work, when we are deeply affected because our job satisfaction is ruined, when time melts like snow to the sun if we’re stuck in traffic, etc.

Why wouldn’t we think about the concept ‘time’ a bit more thoroughly? The debate about time and how to spend it has been going on for ages. It helps us move forward. Our ancestors fought for eight-hour working days and forty-hour working weeks, for the abolition of child labour, for Sunday rest, for annual leave, etc. They made it possible for women today to use time differently than their mothers. A relationship, marriage or children no longer mean the end of our careers. Women are increasingly climbing the ladder, but care time remains unevenly distributed in many cases.

Thinking about time is no unnecessary luxury. Nothing is acquired. New challenges continue presenting themselves. Time credit is reduced, even though it is convenient to combine care time with your job. Other examples include phasing out early retirement, now known as SWT in Flanders, and increasing the retirement age. Sure, the answers of the past need not be today’s or tomorrow’s answers. But the current time frame is taken for granted: life time should be working time, used as efficiently as possible and preferably as long as possible. Any time that is not used actively or productively soon becomes slacking time. And slacking time is not valued.

A contemporary interpretation of time imposes itself. We are connected in our race against time, individually and collectively, m/f/x: we struggle with stress time, yearn for high-quality working time, time to spend with our family, high-quality time at the end or during our careers, time to develop, time to go on holiday, etc. What are we waiting for so as not to fall down and have to get up alone again?

Never Work Alone 2023 | Author: Sandra Vercammen | Image: Dries Luyten