In modern life time is becoming a more and more valuable and hard to obtain asset. For many years and centuries people were ready to spend their time not only to earn money, but even to save it. Nowadays, the trend is to save time. Oftentimes it costs money to save time. People who live in modern urban areas will order food delivery from the restaurants not out of laziness or desire to eat something special, but only to save time, which is necessary for cooking. Ordering cleaning services is another popular way of saving time by avoiding certain daily routines.
The realities of modern life are such that people have to spend more time travelling. Those who live in large cities have to spend hours in traffic daily. The society is pressing upon humans a number of “must have things” which humans then seeks to achieve: a newer model of a car, cell-phone, and a new model of clothes, another kitchen appliance, and a conceptually new toy for the child. In order to afford all this, modern people work harder and harder. In many cases their working day is not limited to must eight hours a day even for experts. People, who run their businesses, have to dedicate long hours to management, promotion and development of their enterprises. Besides, any professional in modern realities needs to keep track of frequent and significant changes, which take place in almost every aspect of life, in any professional field. In this respect modern experts more and more frequently speak of such a concept as life long learning (Taut, 2002).
The concept of life long learning presupposes that the education of a professional will not be limited to university or college education. During the period of their life the conditions of their work may change significantly, new tools and new approaches may appear. This is why it is important to keep on learning throughout one’s professional career. Besides, there are background skills, which are “must have” for almost every individual, such may include IT literacy, driving, skills of effective parenthood and a number of other skills which need to be obtained and developed throughout one’s life time. This means, that a modern person requires time not only for work, which in many instances takes much more than just 8 hours a day, not only for the way to work and back, which in some instances takes up to several hours a day, but also requires time for constant education. Sedentary lifestyle, which many inhabitants of big metropolitan areas lead, add up another “must” to this list: physical training on daily basis – jogging, attending gyms and swimming pools. All this makes the daily schedule of a modern person quite busy (Posthill, 2002).
But what about the personal life? It is wrong to dedicate the entire life of a human being to meeting mainly physiological needs. This actualizes the problem of effective time management. Time management is, probably, the main skill, which contemporary people need to obtain in order to improve the quality of their lives. Time management, however, belongs to the category of those skills, which require life long learning. The basics of life learning need, probably, to be implemented into school and college curricula. Such a measure is likely not only to improve overall quality of life and life satisfaction, but may drastically decrease the level of violence and conflict within entire society; this is why such a measure should and can become a concern of state level. Instead, for many people are left alone with their inability to manage their time effectively, which results in numerous easy to avoid conflicts and psychological disorders.
- Posthill, J. (2002), Clock and Calender Time. A missing anthropolical problem, in Time and Society, 11(2/3), pp. 251-270.
- Tait, A. (2002) Rethinking Learner Support at the Open University UK, in Tait, A. and Mills, R. (eds.) Rethinking Learner Support in Distance Education: Change and Continuity in an International Context, 185-197, London: Routledge Falmer
