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

- Pooja Singh [e-mail]

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 | 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.