The Psychology of Time

I've just finished reading "The Time Paradox" by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd http://www.thetimeparadox.com . I came across Zimbardo's work on Time about a year ago, and I remember being astonished that there was such a thing as the psychology of time. There's a lot of work in the field which hasn't made it into the business world - where the paradigm is still that of time management.

In their book, Zimbardo and Boyd point out that the time management industry is organised by "futures" - the people who like to plan ahead and prefer structure. This explains why time management doesn't work for those who are more present or even past orientated.

That view of time as a purely linear thing, and the 19th century time and motion approach doesn't work for people who work more in the present, and prefer a less structured way of working.

In fact I'm pretty sure that this monochronic approach sows the seed of its own destruction.
What do you do with the time saved by efficiency measures? You fill it up with more activity and more busyness. Which leads to time anxiety and time starvation.....and another time management technique to "solve" the problem, and so on and so on.

I'm reminded of the "storage solutions" offered by IKEA. It's a great way to organise your stuff, but it doesn't really address the core problem of having too much stuff in the first place.