# Time is a Construct, But My Sleep Schedule is a Crime Scene
Look, I get it. We’re all supposed to be out here “living our best lives” and “maximizing every second” like we’re competing in the Hunger Games of productivity. But let’s be real for a second: time is just a social construct invented by Big Clock to sell you anxiety and overpriced planners. And frankly, I’m over it.
I had a revelation the other night at 3:47 AM while doom-scrolling through Reddit (as one does), and I realized that time isn’t a river, a line, or whatever Deepak Chopra is selling on his latest podcast tour. Time is a scam. A full-on, government-backed, calendar-endorsed pyramid scheme where the only winners are people who wake up at 5 AM to “hustle” and drink kale smoothies. Spoiler alert: those people are also miserable, they’re just better at hiding it.
Let’s break down the absolute dumpster fire that is our relationship with time, because I have some *thoughts* and none of them are productive.
## The “Circadian Rhythm” Is a Lie Your Boss Told You
Remember when we were kids and time felt like a viscous sludge that moved slower than a DMV line? Summer vacation lasted approximately 47 years, and a five-minute timeout felt like a life sentence. Now? I blinked and suddenly it’s 2024 and I still haven’t returned that library book from 2019. What happened?
Science says our perception of time changes as we age because of something called “proportional theory” — basically, when you’re 10, a year is 10% of your life. When you’re 30, it’s like 3%. So time feels faster because our brains are just like, “Meh, been there, done that, skip to the existential dread.” Cool. Great. Love that for us.
But here’s the kicker: we’ve built an entire society around this arbitrary grid of hours and minutes, and then we wonder why everyone is walking around with the emotional stability of a wet napkin. We’re out here trying to optimize every second like we’re a tech startup, but we’re running on the hardware of a depressed potato.
## The Productivity Grift
Can we talk about the “time management” industry for a second? It’s a multi-billion dollar grift designed to make you feel bad about how you spend your time, so you buy their app/planner/course/life-hack book. And you know what happens after you buy it? You still waste time. You just waste time *feeling guilty* about wasting time. It’s like paying for a gym membership but only using it to take a shower after you ate a whole pizza.
I tried one of those “time blocking” methods where you schedule every 15 minutes of your day. You know what happened? I spent 45 minutes color-coding the blocks and then immediately ignored them to watch a 6-hour deep dive on why the Titanic’s boiler room door was designed by a moron. Peak efficiency, baby.
And don’t even get me started on “morning routines.” Apparently, if you’re not cold plunging, meditating, journaling, and saying affirmations to your houseplant by 6 AM, you’re basically a failure. Meanwhile, my morning routine involves hitting snooze four times, staring at the ceiling, and questioning every life choice that led me to this moment. And you know what? That’s valid.
## DST Can Get in the Sea
Daylight Saving Time is the annual reminder that we are all just meat puppets living in a simulation run by an intern who doesn’t know how to set the clock on the VCR. Twice a year, we collectively agree to shift our schedules by an hour, and then act shocked when everyone is either a zombie or a rage monster for two weeks.
We’ve been doing this since World War I. It was originally to save fuel or something. Now? It’s just a hazing ritual that the government forces us to endure because “tradition.” And every year, there’s a bill to get rid of it, and every year, nothing happens. It’s like the “It’s a Small World” ride of legislative failures. We’re stuck, and we hate it, but we can’t look away.
## The Real Villain: The “24/7” Economy
Here’s where it gets real dark. We live in a world that never stops. The internet never sleeps. Your boss can email you at 11 PM on a Saturday and expect a response by Sunday brunch. We’ve blurred the lines between work, rest, and the void so much that we don’t even know what “off time” means anymore.
We’ve outsourced our sense of time to algorithms. Netflix auto-plays the next episode before you can even breathe. Instagram tells you how long you’ve been scrolling (rude). Your phone literally has a “screen time” feature that just exists to shame you. And we still don’t stop.
We’re burning the candle at both ends and then wondering why the candle is crying. We’re running on fumes, caffeine, and spite. And for what? So we can retire at 67 and finally have time to do the things we wanted to do? News flash: by the time you’re 67, your knees will hurt, everything will be gluten-free, and the only thing you’ll want to do is yell at kids on your lawn.
## The Only Solution Is to Opt Out
I’m not saying we should all become time anarchists and live in a commune where we just vibe until the sun goes down (though, low-key, that sounds amazing). But maybe we need to chill the hell out.
Stop trying to optimize your life like it’s a spreadsheet. Let time be a suggestion, not a prison sentence. Miss a deadline? Whatever. Show up late to brunch? They’ll survive. Take a nap at 3 PM on a Tuesday? That’
Final Thoughts
After reading this piece, it’s clear that our modern obsession with “time” as a scarce resource to be optimized has deeply eroded our capacity for genuine presence. The real tragedy isn't that we run out of hours, but that we’ve forgotten how to inhabit them fully—trading the slow, messy rhythm of lived experience for the sterile efficiency of a stopwatch. As a journalist who has chased too many deadlines, I can tell you that the most meaningful stories, and lives, are never written in the margins of a calendar.