The Ancient Greeks talked of two types of time. Chronos, or quantitative time, and Kairos, qualitative time.
They say a picture speaks a thousand words, so I love this simple drawing, courtesy of this thread on Kairos and Chronos time by “The Cultural Tutor” in this twitter thread.
Do read the thread for more depth on this, as well as this article by Enuma Okoro if you have an FT subscription.
For me, though, my mind immediately went to such thoughts as being in a flow state, of how time is infinitely malleable, where a moment can feel like hours and hours can feel like a moment, depending on your state of mind and what you are doing.
This is a page from Matt Haig’s book “Reasons to stay alive”, one I referenced in: “How to stretch time“, in which I also referred to walking and to silence (themes I have written around many times on this blog) and their impact on how we see, feel and experience time.
However, and this is a big “but”, if we fill our days with Chronos time, if we are always “too busy”, we will most likely lose the opportunities to experience Kairos time.
I give you now one personal story. Well over a decade ago I sat at the dinner table for a weekday family dinner. I was pleased that we all sat down together for dinner, but then one of my sons said “Dad, can you please have dinner with us?”. You see, I wasn’t present, I was in “busy” mode, still clearing messages on my Blackberry after 7pm. This was one of many “wake-up calls” I had to have until I finally chose to release myself from the tyranny of Chronos time.
I don’t see my sons that often now as they live in Cayman and I am in the UK, but I do now totally feel Kairos time when with them. Most recently one of them visited for a week when I was still on chemo, so I wasn’t up for doing much more than sitting on the sofa chatting. As we talked for hours and hours, I felt and lived every Kairos moment with my son. There was no Chronos time there, nothing to do, nowhere to be, simply to be present for and with each other.
Be aware of when you are on Chronos time and when, no matter how rarely, you are in Kairos time.
Oh, and a practical thought. Kairos time can also be focussed time. Do you put blocks of time for focussed work in your diary each week and make sure it is sacrosanct? (phone on silent and put away, notifications on computer turned off) ? If not, could you do so?