Can we ever give ourselves the gift of time?
We’ve got apps, gadgets, hacks and services to get work done faster and better. Yet we remain busier than ever
The Instagram algorithm had decided that I was looking for a lifestyle of optimisation. Reels on the advantages of starting your workday at 3am or 1pm, depending on the content creators’ views, were clamouring for my attention.
Some ads suggested tools to maximise sleeping hours so I could fight procrastination and “Get Sh*t Done" before deadline. In between were memes of how 1 January 2025 felt like it was just this Monday, and why only January and Monday come so early. Of all the content thrown at me this past week, a productivity guru’s reel to help with “rawdogging" caught my attention. Earlier slang for unprotected sexual intercourse, “rawdogging" is now Internet-speak for doing nothing for a few hours to hone focus, increase creativity and improve one’s quality of life.
We’re all chasing time, trying to squeeze the most out of every second, turning to all sorts of hacks and tips, looking for ways to find “free time". Yet, free quality time seems perpetually out of reach.
For context, the time spent by Indians on “self-care activities", which includes sleeping and personal hygiene, has declined steadily since 2019, while time spent on socialising and employment has gone up, according to the 2024 Time Use Survey data published by the Union statistics ministry. A rural-urban comparison shows that urban Indians spend more time on employment compared to their rural counterparts, who have more time for self-care, though rural Indians spend more time on unpaid work (such as domestic chores, which usually fall to women) and “producing goods for their own use".
“We are living in a world where hustle culture is on steroids," says Amit Nandkeolyar, an associate professor of organisational behaviour at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad.
Our relationship with “free time"—to be spent leisurely doing activities that bring us joy or with loved ones without worrying about work or chores—remains ambiguous.
“We are being made to feel that time is scarce and we need to ensure that every second offers some kind of commodity-like return. That’s why you have services today that say ‘give a gift of time’, which is interesting because time is in your hands and you can do with it whatever you want. The problem is that we are made to believe that leisure time is time wasted," explains Nandkeolyar.
ANOTHER COMMODITY
One reason our relationship with time has become so transactional is to do with the way it has been commodified. E-commerce platforms promise to deliver everything—from groceries to smartphones and Diwali gift hampers—to your doorstep in 10 minutes or less. On a quick commerce app, you can get a mish-mash of items, including a swastik design clay set, two avocados, snowflake-shaped string light, and a one-gram 24k gold coin—all in eight minutes.
These are the kind of services designed for the people we’ve become, always trying to “hack" time and always glued to screens—Indians spent five hours daily last year on mobile screens, nearly 70% of it devoted to social media and gaming, going by a report by consultancy firm EY, published earlier this year. This figure excludes the hours they already spend online on their laptops for work. In many ways, people have become more available to others but less available to themselves.
“Many people thought they would continue to live the slow life in the post-covid world," says Rahul Advani, cultural anthropologist and insights and strategy manager at Mumbai-based strategy consultancy Plum Insights. “Instead, we went into overdrive, maximising every moment. The definition of time has changed—earlier, we used to experience time because we didn’t have control over it. Now, time has become all about filling it up. The increasing desire to be ‘bored’ is actually a response to the fact that time, something so fluid, has become structured or constricted." He’s referring to the trend of people stepping away from constant stimulation, especially social media, and allowing themselves to be bored or do nothing for a certain number of hours to promote creative thinking.
This paradox of doing more and doing it faster and smarter in order to “have free time" has led to other services for the ever-busy. Smart rings, organisers and other devices promise to help make time for you. Even leisure is about doing things quickly: consider custom music playlists that apps serve based on your mood and tastes. You don’t have to scroll through different genres to discover something you like. It’s all served on a platter within minutes, helping you save time and energy.
Concierge services across the country offer “lifestyle managers" for hire, who help the wealthy with chores that range from the mundane (buy gift for beta’s birthday; unpack suitcases) to the unusual (deliver masalas to hotel room in Uppsala with instructions for the chef). Some of these tasks—planning gifts or special celebrations—would once have been personalised and a way to express one’s feelings.
One Gurugram-based lifestyle management company has a campaign to suggest that time is the biggest gift, and promises to finish your tasks to free up time for loved ones during the festive season. Packages run from ₹2,000-40,000—all to give you the gift of time. By delivering groceries in minutes, picking gifts for family members or clearing your calendar, these apps and services are helping you save time and use it for moments that really matter. Saving time costs money today.
But, can anyone or anything really buy time? “You can save time," Nandkeolyar says. “Now whether you spend that saved free time scrolling Instagram while playing with your kid, or check mails when you wake up in the middle of the night, it depends on you. Time management is not a big task if you follow some strict rules. Attention management is, because even during free time we are trying to multitask, taking away the joy from leisure."
Multi-tasking has its benefits but this blurring of work and leisure has made people forget that not every hour needs to be milked for all its worth.
NEVER ENOUGH
The introduction and evolution of productivity tools indicates that there’s no clear answer to one of the biggest mysteries: Why is time never enough, despite the tech and services available to help us complete our tasks faster?
Nandkeolyar offers an explanation: “Time is porous with no sharp edges. What people forget is that time depends on how society views it; it’s a cultural construct. Why do we return home from the office in the evening? Why is Chhath Puja performed at a certain time in the day? It’s all our construct."
Time’s use is up to us, but it is measured. “The industrial era introduced ‘clock time’ to help decide how much work one can perform in a certain number of hours. That’s from the economics perspective. The sociological view is what we do with the time we have," Nandkeolyar continues.
But there is no doubt that “time-saving" aids may have ended up speeding up our expectations of how much time a task should take, and making us impatient. Consider the speed with which we complain if something isn’t delivered on time or our impatience if an app takes too long to load. “Our patience levels have gone down considerably. The only time I see people now wait (for anything) is when they queue up outside a matcha place that has gone viral or when a new iPhone or some limited-edition sneakers reach the store," says Advani.
Offering his take on why more people complain of less time in a culture obsessed with personal productivity, Advani says, “Because we are able to do so many things in one day, we end up trying to do more things than we can handle."
If there’s one answer to carving out free time with no strings attached, it is intention. The groceries will get delivered, the lifestyle manager will decorate the house for Diwali. But it’s up to you to decide how many times you check your notifications on your phone, watch or ring.
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