Column: Free time will not be more abundant in the future

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, March 29, 2005

BOSTON &045; A friend of mine once worked for a Hollywood executive as chief assistant in charge of the calendar. That wasn’t the actual title, of course, but it was the job description.

This executive had a penchant for filling up her Palm Pilot weeks and months in advance. When the day would come, a day invariably brimming over with &uot;unexpected emergencies,&uot;

she would order another round of cancellations. And begin to fill in the future.

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My friend came to think of this as a binge and purge cycle. Out of earshot, she described her boss as a time-bulimic.

I always remember this, because I wonder how many people suffer from timing disorders. How many make commitments now with the absolute and inaccurate certainty that we will have more time then. Do we look into the future and see an image as distorted as the anorexic who looks into the mirror?

This year, a pair of marketing professors from North Carolina published research about time and timing. The students surveyed said repeatedly they would have more free time on the same day of the next week or the next month than they had today. If you asked these students to add a commitment today, they would answer no. But ask them to do it in the future and they were more likely to say yes.

These students were not just a bunch of cockeyed optimists. The same people had a much more realistic view of their budgets. They were less likely to commit to spending more money in the future than in the present.

But in this sense, time was not money. It was more malleable. When thinking about their spare time, they experienced what the researchers called &uot;irrational exuberance.&uot;

Even those on overload today would take on a fresh load in the future.

&uot;Why do we fall prey to the same mistakes again and again?&uot; asked the researchers, Gal Zauberman and John Lynch. They speculate that because our activities vary from day to day, we don’t learn that on the whole the time these demands make are the same. &uot;People are consistently surprised to be so busy today. … They act as if new demands will not inevitably arise that are as pressing as those faced today.&uot;

This is the 100th year since Einstein published his theory of relativity. I don’t know much about the physics of time but I know something about the psychology.

We just passed the spring equinox. Each year, I pass that mark sure that the summer will be long and languid. Each year, I greet the fall equinox with … surprise.

Americans talk a great deal about time-crunch. We ask each other, &uot;how are you?&uot;

And we answer: &uot;busy.&uot; We export our &uot;productivity,&uot;

which has become the international gold standard of workaholism. We think of time as something that’s been eaten away, not given away.

In just my own adulthood, Americans have lost Sundays to shopping and lost focus to multitasking. We moonlight in the self-help economy and troubleshoot in the fix-it-yourself technology. We spend lifetimes on hold.

In this world, the hero of the month must surely be Joseph Williams, the Baltimore lawyer who sued Sears, Roebuck when a no-show repairman left him waiting for four hours. He won a single dollar and a shiny principle: you can’t waste my time.

But how many of us are also victims of our own timing disorder, keepers of irrational exuberance? Do we also fill in the future out of an irrational anxiety about &uot;free&uot; time?

&uot;It’s difficult to learn that time will not be more abundant in the future,&uot;

wrote the researchers. Well, it is one thing for students to be fooled repeatedly. But it is quite another for those of us who are older. Time is, to put it quietly, less abundant. The refusal to learn a lesson comes with a higher price tag.

I wonder if other cultures suffer from our timing disorder, our &uot;irrational exuberance&uot; Busyness, we believe, is part of our creed. It was that founding father, Thomas Jefferson, who admonished us, &uot;Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.&uot;

But these days, I smile more at the words of that cranky radical, Henry David Thoreau, who replied, &uot;It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is what are we busy about.&uot;

9Ellen Goodman’s e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.)