The March Hare: Spring '03
Issue 36

Open Season for Visitors * Member Bio: Penn * Working on Sustainability * Ecovillage Search * Eco to Go: Time * Can You Help? * Nature Corner * The View from the Top of the Rabbit Hole

Eco to Go: Time
by Jacob Stevens Corvidae
A column that shares lessons learned in taking the Dancing Rabbit lifestyle to the city.

"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you." —Carl Sandburg

When you choose to lead your life according to your ethics, you invariably will run into conflicts in prioritizing your time. And one of the common complaints about many elements of the environmentally-friendly lifestyle is that it takes more time.

Well, guess what? It's true!

Many environmental activities take more time than their typical American counterparts. For example, biking 7 miles to work usually takes more time than driving that distance in a car. And we all know that time is precious--so why bother? Does the eco-friendly choice come only with personal sacrifice? Yes and no. I think much of it depends on how you relate to the time you have.

Slowing Down
Let's begin by considering the idea that it may be okay to slow down a bit. Our lives and our work are not necessarily improved by being filled with more activity. We want our lives to be full, but with what? A packed itinerary of activities does not necessarily make us happier or more effective. I would like to suggest that we should consider filling our lives, not with more tasks, but with more meaning. To absorb the purpose and meaning of our actions, we must be engaged in those actions long enough to notice. This often involves slowing down. Slowing down requires paring down.

To reduce the number of things we do in a day (or week or year) requires making hard choices. Yet the very act of struggling with those choices demands that we become clear about our personal ethics and priorities, for these are what we must base those decisions on. This clarity will make us more effective and presumably happier people, for the more we focus the priorities of our lives as based in our personal ethics, the more we draw closer to the core of who we truly are.

In its simplest form, this comes down to the idea that quality and quantity are often at odds with each other. To achieve quality, we start with low quantity. Only as we master quality in small numbers do we consider taking on undertaking a greater quantity of tasks.

Layering Purposes
One of the great lessons we can learn from the natural world is that healthy, stable "designs" usually layer many functions. For example, the "design" of some fruits serves many different purposes. Their bright color attracts birds, the fruit nourishes the bird, and the seed's rough exterior helps clean the bird's digestive system as it passes through. Simultaneously, the bird helps transport the seed to another location, the bird's digestive system helps roughen and soften the seed's shell allowing it to germinate, and the bird's poop provides nutrients to help the seed grow. Part of the strength of this "design" is that it layers many purposes into a single component. This concept can also be applied to our time-management.

We can see this principle in action in our previous biking example. While the purpose of the bike trip is to get from one place to another, many other purposes can be layered on it. Exercising, thinking, meditating, socializing, and observing nature are all activities that you can do while biking. Driving a car can also have layered purposes. But the additional time that some environmental choices require actually means having more extensive time for the layered activities as well. Being conscious of the layering options can help improve the choices you make about your time.

Layering purposes should not be confused with "multi-tasking". Multi-tasking has come to imply the ability to juggle several unrelated tasks simultaneously. Layering purposes, on the other hand, is the synthesis of multiple tasks or functions into one activity. When purposes are layered, all of the activities are enhanced by the others, instead of competing for attention.

"An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth." --Bonnie Friedman

Resisting ethical choices because of time constraints results in a feeling that we're fighting time. When we learn to fill our time with activity (or inactivity) that is meaningful to us, then time becomes our ally. It's still hard work to choose your activities and structure your time. All I can tell you is that from my experience, it's worth it.

Open Season for Visitors * Member Bio: Penn * Working on Sustainability * Ecovillage Search * Eco to Go: Time * Can You Help? * Nature Corner * The View from the Top of the Rabbit Hole