Just in Time – Never enough, from different perspectives

Just in Time – Never enough, from different perspectives
Time Symmetry series. Interplay of clock and fractal elements on the subject of time, space and science

What then, is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to someone who asks, I know it not.”
St. Augustine, Confessions, Book II, Sec. 14.

So many interesting reflections on time to consider. Now we are in Daylight Saving Time, DST, time of the year, and it is the same problem every year…When are we changing, when is everybody else changing?

In Europe we changed to wintertime, ie back the clock one hour, on October 25, (last Sunday of October) and EU in its regulation hasnt decided if they are staying with it, and there is actually a scientific formula calculating the date of change. All readable in the Summertime in Europe.

US is changing on November 1, two days before the US election. India is not observing Daylight Saving Time changes. But part of Australia and New Zealand are. Southern Australia changed on Oct 4, and New Zeland on Sept 27 as found in Timeanddate

The Digoshens Founders grandfather was a train engine driver. Doesnt sound so cool today, but was a truly startup occupation at the time, and fairly well paid as it needed engineering skills and high risk taking, with mortality risk, as the risks of signals wouldnt be working was high.  But as train engine driver he was also a champion of time unity. Researching his occupational background she found that it wasnt until we got trains, that most countries started to have the same time within the countries. They couldnt make the train time tables match, as the times was a bit different all over.

Time travels in divers paces with divers persons
William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Another interesting reflection on time can be found in the book “A Geography of Time“. The Digoshen Founder started to read it when she took a leadership position in an Believe Indian company, and she found their perspective of time so radically different. And a time difference from me was three AND A HALF hour.

The book in itself, A Geography of Time, is an interesting read and quite reserach oriented. For example they measured the average walking speed of randomly selected pedestrians over a distance of 60 feet, ind different countries and cities, flat location, walking alone, 35 of each gender. Then they measured speed in the workplace.. And they got some interesting results.

They found clear linkages to the economic wellbeing, degree of industrialization, population size, climate and cultural values (as individualistic values moves faster than those emphasizing collectivism).

The more developed the country, the less free time per day. What kind of rule is this? The more timesaving machinery there is, the more pressed a person is for time.” Sebastian de Grazia, of Time, Work, and Leisure

The book and its research shares that that in countries farther away from the equator, people are more likely to have a ”clock culture”. A “clock culture” emphasizes punctuality, as well as the overall importance of time and planning. As a nation is closer to the equator, they put less emphasis on time and more on the appreciation of an event as it unfolds. Event cultures are perfectly captured in sayings such as “Give time to time” (“Darle tiempo al tiempo”) in Mexico or “Any time is Trinidad time” in Trinidad and Tobago. Another explanation shared is the ecological focus on time, and that time and planning are emphasized in cultures with large seasonal influences located at a greater distance from the equator. There is an historical need to plan for the next season for your survival.

Another area that influences time is the increasing urbanization. We tend to live a faster more hurried live in cities.

The healthier a place’s economy, the faster its tempo.

As a city grows larger, the value of its inhabitants’
time increases with the city’s increasing wage rate
and cost of living, so that economizing on time becomes
more urgent, and life becomes more hurried and harried.
” Irving Hoch

In these time when many people live with a perspective of time scarcity, we are flooded with tolls to use our time more effectively, I all from checklists and increasingly advanced calendar systems.

We even have Nobel Prize winners researching our speed in thinking concepts. As Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate Daniel Kahneman summarized in hos book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” highlighting that we have two thought systems, one which is fast, instinctive and emotional. Another with is slower, more deliberative and more logical. And how they are both needed and complement each other.

The area of time also continues to coin new terms. As “podfasters”.

I am constantly curious and love to learn. And to learn more, I have to confess, I am a podfaster.” Liselotte Engstam, Digoshen Founder

Podfaster literary mean that you are person, using certain podcast listening platforms ability to increase the speed of listening of episodes.  According to one study  we listen in average to 5 podcast episodes a week. However more than 20 % listen to even more. And podfasters often tend to listen to even more.

Time travels in divers paces with divers persons
William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Digoshen Recommends – Curated Podcast list

Our podfaster backgrounds is probably one of the reasons we at Digoshen try to keep up with interesting new podcasts, that makes our listening efforts worthwhile.

And as a service we provide our followers with the regularly updated “Digoshen Recommends” curated list of podcasts worth listening two. It’s a broader list including insights for leaders and boards on topics like future, strategy, technology, leadership, communication and we always add one more odd podcast that we find interesting and entertaining.

We have recently updated our Digoshen Recommended Podcast List. This time the more odd podcast makes you reflect on time, can you figure out which of them? We hope you enjoy them all, find them here.

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This blogpost was also shared at the Digoshen Insight Blog