I’m sure you have all heard the phrase “Time is money.” And when this phrase is stated, it has a certain air of finality to it. There’s an implication that “money is the most important thing, so hurry up.”
But here is my problem: I’ve met a lot of rich people in my life. Several millionaires, and may be a billionaire or two, and without exception, these people all moved slower than molasses in January. I’ve never met a really rich person who seemed to be in any sort of a hurry, ever. So if time is money, what gives?
The concept of time management is more than one could address in a voluminous book, much less a blog entry, but I’m just going to give my own little perspective on it in hopes that it provides some worthwhile useful information to you.
In the culture of playing music professionally, to be in a hurry is a great sin. Total command of the pace is everything. There is absolutely no reward for playing Beethoven’s fifth faster than some other orchestra.
One of the biggest lessons I took from that very intense era of my life (when I decided to somehow take myself from being an ardent amateur to a professional player) was that it was all about time management. What I discovered from many thousands of hours of practicing was, I had lost control of my internal clock somewhere along the line, and by practicing at super slow pace, I was able to get it back.
The only real deadline in life is death itself, and most of us have no idea when that’s going to happen. And yet, consistently, higher speed is considered to be better than lower speed. If you look around you at any moment, you’ll see people who are in an arbitrary hurry. If you are “late,” this is supposedly bad, but if you take a closer look, this often creates a sense of elevated social status… a classic example is showing up to the airport only an hour before your flight. You will be allowed to pass by all the other people who showed up on time, in order to make your flight. So I guess it has its advantages.
So there is something to be said for the imposition of arbitrary time limits and deadlines, as this creates a sense of urgency and drama. While I suppose this has its applications, all too often, this manufactured urgency has an insidious purpose, of distracting us from something else that we really don’t want to think about. I have often observed people who really couldn’t cope with being calm. It’s like taking away their cigarettes. Their manufactured sense of being in a hurry is a sort of addiction, as it distractesthem from certain things that they don’t want to have to feel or think about. So time isn’t just money, it’s also a drug.
I think I could go so far as to say that as a society, we are addicted to being in a hurry. This is why virtually every advertisement you hear on television has an extremely peppy music track behind it. This music seldom has any artistic or aesthetic quality to it. Far more often, it has a sense of fearful urgency or intimidation. Even so, it’s hard to hurry people who are already hurrying almost as fast as they can possibly hurry.
So if you want to get out of this imposed rut of a rat race, and break free of the crowd, I suggest this: For all of the training and emphasis that you receive it every waking moment of moving faster, I would like to state that there is tremendous power in going slow.
If you will excuse a little name dropping here, John Williams is famous in the culture of professional musicians for his ability to run a rehearsal. He is never rushed, he is never frantic, we never “run short of time.” While I suppose this loses a certain manufactured sense of importance and urgency, and many people would think that such things are a terrible thing to lose, for him, being in total calm command of the pace gains him a much higher level of respect from the players. This is because, in the ultimate analysis, being in a hurry is a waste of energy and distracts from the value of whatever actual product it is that you are creating. This is, of course, particularly apparent in the music business, where management of time is the job itself. So it’s not surprising that the guy who is at the top of the heap is never in a hurry.
Yes, time is money. Time is also emotion. Time is also a resource. And if you put yourself in a sort of first gear of slow and careful time management, there is no hill you cannot climb. Faster speed is not always the answer.
Also, you have a unique inner clock, a preferred pace for healthy existence. While factory managers cannot see value in that, speaking as just one lone artist, that pace has a value in itself, just for the happiness and pleasant energy that emanates from it. Your pace, your personal rhythm, is a big part of what makes you a unique entity. Of course, if you embrace your unique pace, you may be excommunicated from the rat race. For them, money is more important. At least, that’s what they tell themselves. But are they headed for a well-defined finish line, or are they just running away from something? Is the hurrying for a purpose, or is the hurrying the purpose itself?
Many people have been led to believe that going fast is what makes them special. But in truth, the more you hurry, you the more you become generic, as you lok more and more like the other people in a hurry.
Yes, time is money. But hopefully, some of your time is also priceless.
© Justin Locke
