Time to make a living

A recent post on Squash that alludes to time "Making a living in the smallest possible time" caused me to reflect (and I had the time!)

In it, Phil Sim credits Paul Graham with some commentary that supports the idea encapsulated in the heading. Not far beneath the surface of this commentary is some sadness. While I hope that neither Phil or Paul have recently experienced bereavement, nothing makes us more respectful of time than death.

Other than actual death, everything else is an artificial deadline. And in our extravagant use of language in business, we speak of deadlines, even drop deadlines. Our lives - and our computers, the Internet and virtual worlds - are defined by chronology. This is a universally accepted measure broken into years, months, days, hours... nanoseconds.

As Phil seems to imply, I completely support the idea of making a living in the smallest possible. I spend time dreaming of ways to earn a living that will support me without taking up my time. I have a long list of things I'd like to be doing other than making a living, and I am forced by my circumstances, nature and patterns of behaviour to compromise this conflict.

We speak of realtime, Internet time, face time and "time for a chat" (usually not good)

Recently, I have come to understand time in a different boomerexy way.

Theologians, philosophers and rhetoricians make various interpretations of kairos. To me, kairos captures those moments in your life that give it definition. The time you kissed, had sex, proposed, married, became a parent, got fired, dumped or failed some test, won something or were elevated in some way for the first time.

While chronos time ticks along as I contemplate making a living in the smallest possible time, it's kairos moments for which I live. I'm no less committed to getting the money thing sorted out, and I am increasingly conscious of leveraging my making-a-living-days more effective, but kairos time can not be compressed. After all, how long does a decision take? Not the processing, contemplation, procrastination... a decision.

Seems we're all a few (kairos) decisions away from making a living. In the meanwhile, using your precious chronological allocation to hug someone you love (or better still, tell them), be with them or do that thing you've been meaning to, it's a small concession with potentially great reward. Do it even if, as a result, it takes you a moment longer to make your living.