James Wallman's Time and How To Spend It

According to James Wallman, we Westerners have around five hours a day of spare time, but feel we rushed and don’t have any time for ourselves. He offers seven rules for richer, happier days.

Let’s establish just how silly the book is. This is an actual quote:

Or you could be seeking deeper change: attending the Hoffman course, going to Mecca for the Hajj, taking part in an ayahuasca ceremony, or walking the Camino de Santiago.

The Hoffman course is a week-long residential course in California or Connecticut. I’ll let you read their blurb. Or you may be able to guess the psychobabble just from those details.

The Hajj is a pilgrimage to Mecca. You can’t just walk the walk, you have to talk the talk. If you don’t believe you’re not making a pilgrimage, you’re just being a religious tourist. You can’t seek change on your way to Mecca: you have to be a pious Muslim already. The same applies to the Camino de Santiago, which is the pilgrimage across northern Spain to see the relics of St James of Compostella. Again, you can’t seek change on the Camino, you already have to be a practicing Catholic who believes in the power of relics. Or you’re just a sight-seer.

An Ayahuasca Ceremony involves taking a South American herbal hallucinogenic. You can read more here. It’s best done in South America, of course. The view out of a Newcastle tower block isn’t quite as conducive to spiritual reflection, and you probably couldn’t get the right guru to lead you.

So that gives you an idea of the level of depth of thought that has gone into this book.

Wallman’s book is full of hacks - tricks to make you feel better. As with all lists of hacks, some of these may work for you, others for me, and if we get a couple of useful hacks out of a book that costs £10, that’s good value for money. This is one reason these books sell: we know each one will have at least one thing we can use.

STORIES is Wallman's Big Hack.

According to STORIES, when we’re thinking of doing something, he says, we should ask:

Story - is this something I want the guys at the office or the next girlfriend to know I did? Transform - will this help me change in a way I want? Outside and Offline - pretty much self-explanatory Relationships - will it strengthen existing relationships or help me make new ones? Intense - will it be intense and memorable? Extraordinary - in some way? Status - will it connect me to others and be significant?

So, not chilling on the sofa watching Two or Three Things I Know About Her on DVD then.

But, if you’re seventeen, you’re with a bunch of other people from college, it’s your first trip to the Curzon Soho, and your generation has had the good sense to pronounce Nouvelle Vague movies cool, then watching Godard’s classic at a retrospective at the Curzon... that’s a Story.

It’s not so much the activity (aside from Outside and Offline) as the circumstances in which the activity is performed.

The giveaway sign of the inveterate hacker is that they dive straight for detailed, specific problems. There’s no overview, no stock-taking. Spend more time with your friends they say, whereas the correct question is Which of your friends are worth spending time with?

How much spare time do I really have? (Don’t count commuting, meal prep, morning and evening toilet, and all the hours between arriving and leaving work. Also don’t count shopping, washing, and other housework.)

What do I spend that spare time doing now? Which of those activities do I wish I could stop? Which are guilty pleasures? Which leave me feeling empty? Which leave me feeling tired in a bad way? In a good way?

Which of my friends and acquaintances are worth spending time with and why / why not? How can I spend more time with the worthy ones, and let the bad ones slide?

How much exercise am I getting? Is it the right kind? Does it wear me out or build me up?

What have I always wanted to do but haven’t yet done? Which can I afford to do? Which could I do on my next week off from work? Or at the next weekend?

What am I doing that I think I ‘ought’ to be doing, but I don’t really want to, and isn’t really giving me any benefits?

Those kinds of questions.

Walman forgets that everything we do can’t be funky intense and exceptional.

(Unless you’re Lee Dorsey)

Sometimes it just has to be not junk. The trick is to find something else to do rather than fall down the black holes of TV, You Tube or whatever else counts as junk for us. At the end of a long day, with a frazzled brain and no zip, settling down to a nice Alain Resnais movie, or even a Donald E Westlake thriller, can seem like too much effort. And after a day in the politically-correct and painfully polite environment of the modern workplace, having Jordan Peterson call things ‘despicable’ and ‘ridiculous’ can feel almost refreshing.

Besides, I’m not so sure that we should let an author get away with the claim that a week’s worth of expensive psychobabble is more valuable than a few well-chosen videos from Alux, Jordan Peterson and Jocko Willink. As for social pursuits, I don’t want to count the half-drunk hours I and some mates spent playing Risk or Trivial Pursuit in my twenties or even thirties, and I’m not sure that’s any worse than playing an online multi-player game.

Spare time should not be used for toxic and pointless behaviour, but every minute doesn’t have to be used for self-improvement either.

So like all hack-books, get a couple of things from it, and it's worth it. Take the whole thing seriously and you're being misled. Took. Bamboozled.