One of the major sporting events in Cape Town, South Africa (where I have the joy of living!) is the annual Cape Argus/Pick n Pay cycle tour that snakes for 109km around the Cape Peninsula.

35 000 cyclists descend on Cape Town for this famous spectacle.

One of the most often heard questions after the race is:”What was your time?”

Pages and pages of names and finish times are published a few days after the event, and people make promises to finish in a shorter time next year.

This is a rather linear way of looking at what this great event can bring.

How about asking questions like:

“Who did you meet along the way?”

“Did you also get the baboons at the turn off to Cape Point?”

“DId you pull off for that great massage at Tokai?”

It begs a response that is very different from the linear “so many hours and minutes” reply.

It begs a response about the experience of the experience…

The ancient Greeks, as I understand it, had three concepts/words for time:

* chronos: linear, measured, “clock” time.  1 hour + 1 hour = 2 hours.

* kairos: experiential time

* eon (aeon): An immeasurable or infinite space of time; eternity; a long space of time; an age (from www.dictionary.com)

From Wikipedia:

“While [chronos] refers to chronological or sequential time, [kairos] signifies a time in between, a moment of undetermined period of time in which something special happens. What the special something is depends on who is using the word. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.”

I like this example: A golfer hits a hole-in-one. Or you bungy from the highest bridge in Africa.

* Chronos: How long did it take?  Less than a minute.

* Kairos: How did you experience it? How does it feel?  Great!  Fantastic! Unbelievable! Heehaaaa!

* Eon: How long will you remember this for?  For the rest of my life.

An important question arises: Do we (should we) not do things and live life for long term impact rather than instant gratification and short term gain (often at the expense of generations to come)?

If so, then let’s think where the long term impact (e.g. “I will remember it forever”) comes from  - from how long it took, or from what you did and experienced?

The answer is obvious: eon comes from kairos, not chronos.  It comes from what you do and experience and not how long it takes.

Yet we tend to focus so much on speeding things up rather than slowing things down.

The “fast productivity” question is: “How long will the meeting take?”.

The “slow productivity” question is” “Should we even have this meeting?”

So many people complain about attending unproductive meetings, yet they do not question the meeting.

Rather than keep on rushing from one meeting to the next, just stop the meeting madness for a moment and ask the Slow Productivity questions: “Why are we meeting?”, “What is the desired outcome?”, “What do you want me to come and to at your meeting?”.

If there are no clear and meaningful answers to these questions - don’t go!

In Africa we have the concept of “African time”.

From Wikipedia: “Africa time” or African time is a colloquial term used to describe a perceived cultural tendency, in some parts of Africa, toward a more relaxed attitude to time. This is sometimes used in a negative sense, about tardiness in appointments, meetings and events. The term is also sometimes used to describe the more leisurely, relaxed and less rigorously scheduled lifestyle found in these countries, especially as opposed to the more hectic, clock-bound pace of daily life in Western countries.  In October 2007, an Ivorian campaign against African time, [had] the slogan… “‘African time’ is killing Africa - let’s fight it.”

But is it?  Or is the clock from the West killing the real spirit of Africa?

Maybe Slow Productivity can embrace practical ways of exploring African time and Slow Time for paradoxically improving productivity?

“Ex Africa semper aliquid novi” - Out of Africa there is always something new.

Maybe the time for African Time is here if we want to have more sanity and improved quality of life and less rush; enjoy more of kairos and be less enslaved to chronos?

Only time will tell.

The question ‘Did you have a good day at work?’ is another way of asking ‘Was it productive?’ Time spent at work in exchange for money creates the expectation of things done and achieved, and efficiently to boot. A good employee is one who gives more to the company than required, whose productivity is worth his weight in gold. You know the drill: time is money, exceed all expectations, impress the right people with your skills etc. Think about costs per hour, target quotas and service levels to be met. Throw in some sweeteners with bonuses (and overtime if you’re lucky), but also remember that you are expendable and easily replaced in any jobs climate. Companies spend a lot of managerial time and effort stipulating you must be productively busy, or appear to be productive, at all times. They’re careful to calculate the value of lost productivity due to private web surfing, emailing and social networking, or listen to scary reports by consultants who specialize in productive propaganda. But the resultant situation is this: our general idea of  real productivity has been entirely usurped by these raw corporate economics of work.

Consider this situation: when a person becomes suddenly unemployed, downshifted or made redundant, his sense of productivity often stays at the level of expectation as was when regularly employed. And for quite some time. If the unemployed day isn’t full of achievement and tasks fulfilled (applications sent, networks built & maintained, phone calls and queries made), and well-managed for time, then the day hasn’t been productive at all. There’s no satisfactory sense of rest being earned; a latent sense of guilt takes hold, a niggling sense of personal failure. It’s the old ideas and expectations talking. I don’t think depression sets in faster anywhere else than it does with unemployed people.

This is why I’m slightly suspicious of people who live only for work, or feel unconsciously trapped by their careers somehow: they let their jobs determine their personal values and sense of satisfaction. The cubicle-outlook has become their private cubicular outlook.

For which the only prescription is a healthy dose of self-indulged laziness. A complete spell of nothing and no expectation. A certain but significant amount of boredom, faffing about in the shed, walks in the park, beers in the afternoon, swims in the sea. To clear the head and reset the personal sense of productivity. To approach and stretch that moment usually reached on the last days of a holiday, when you actually start getting used to the idea of doing very little — to push through and make that the norm. It’s a key moment you don’t want to wait until retirement to find you can’t change any more — that’s the worst time and place to discover you’re a work-shaped husk of a human. We are not husks, we are so only compared to the full artful life; we can easily unlearn all that work and productivity guff. You might not be earning, but you might also be rescuing your brain.

The key is taking control of time again, and being creative with how you spend your time. Clearing the head is productive. Not thinking sometimes is productive. Walking for an hour is productive. Talking to varied people and changing your perspective is productive. Watching your breathing, or just being gentle with your movements can be very productive. It’s the expectation of immediate benefits and returns and byproducts that mucks us up.

The virtue of Slow is this: take control of your time, take control of your mind, and then create your own sense of expectation and fulfillment. The results might be quietly surprising. Beware of any externally-imposed sense of productivity or duty to things that don’t resonate on a personal level — work has to match up with your personality in some way. If your mind is an instrument, then you’d be careful of what kind of music (and for whom) you’d play it. Cultivate and sculpt and expand your own definition of living, your own life: that’s the only art. Because that’s where true productivity begins.