Slowing down... or finding your own rhythm?

"Stop multitasking to be more productive", "Slow down to succeed": these are the catchy titles of magazines, training programs, personal development coaches and bloggers/youtubers who propose to teach us how to better manage our time, to regain a certain serenity in our daily lives.

Andréa Gourmelen, University of Montpellier and Jeanne Lallement, University of La Rochelle

This article is based on research published in the journal " Research et Applications en Marketing", which lists and summarizes the work of marketing researchers over the past 25 years on the relationship with time and its influence on consumer behavior.

Certainly, some statistics highlight a need for time management advice: in a survey carried out in early 2018, Harris Interactive indicated that 53% of French people say they would like to slow down their pace of life. This aspiration clashes with the fact that 65% of them feel they often lack the time to do everything they'd like in a day. This trend towards slowing down the pace of life and avoiding multitasking seems to be an offensive to the fast-paced society described by German sociologist and philosopher Hartmut Rosa in 2010 in his book Acceleration. A social critique of time. But do we all have to slow down?

Know yourself

Like the praise for speed, the praise for slowness starts from a basic injunction: "everyone should slow down"! In today's society, everything is done to make us go faster (from means of transport to Internet speed, or more recently, virtual assistants, etc.). Increasingly connected and solicited, we see tasks following one another in rapid succession, without having the time to respond to every solicitation. Should we all slow down? Can we really afford to?

This injunction to slow down overlooks an essential point: the individual aspect of our relationship with time. We're not all equal when it comes to the passage of time and the way it feels: some people like to do several things at once, so why stop them? Some people don't like to plan their activities, so why force them? Some people like to go fast, so why force them to slow down?

Faced with all these antagonistic trends, from multitasking that is praised and then decried, from acceleration to a slow life, it seems normal to be at a loss. This is simply because the relationship with time is complex, and not only linked to society, but also to the individual and the situations he or she has to deal with. In other words, everyone has their own relationship with time: it's better to know yourself than to succumb to fads that don't suit you (e.g. "slow life" for someone who likes to be in a hurry, multitasking for someone who likes to do one thing at a time).

Test: are you polychronic?

What is your relationship with the passage of time? Do you tend to focus on the future or the past? Do you like to do several things at once? Because everyone's individual relationship to time influences behavior, management science researchers have developed scales to measure this individual relationship to time.

So, to find out whether you should only do one thing at a time, or several tasks at the same time, you can simply ask yourself what you like, which in this case means assessing your degree of polychronicity. To do this, simply indicate your level of agreement with each of the following phrases on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree):

• I prefer to work on several projects every day, rather than finish one and move on to the next.
• When I have several assignments, I like to switch from one to another rather than doing one at a time.
• I get much more involved in what I'm doing if I can switch between different tasks.
• I'd rather work on several projects than concentrate my efforts on just one.
• When I need to finish a task, I like to alternate it with other tasks.

(Test adapted from Popowski and Oswald's Multitasking Preference Inventory (2010))

The higher your score, the more you find yourself in the sentences presented, and therefore the more you are what we call a polychronic. In other words, you enjoy multitasking. It's your deepest nature, regardless of circumstances. In this case, it's in your best interest to choose a multitasking mode of action. Conversely, if the majority of you don't agree with these sentences, you should concentrate on one task at a time, because you're a monochronic.

Our relationship with time is both personal and multifaceted. Examples such as the notion of slowing down, multitasking and planning activities are the ones that raise the most questions in our daily lives. But they are only part of our individual relationship with time.

A relationship with time that dictates our behavior

In 2018, we set out to take a look at the many facets of our relationship with time. What emerges is that many of our behaviors are dictated by our individual relationship to the passage of time in general, or specifically to the past, present or future.

For example, giving your time to others (volunteering) once you've retired depends on how you perceive the time left to live as you age. The same applies to the purchase of savings products, which necessarily involve a projection into the future, when we'll pass away and need to pass on an inheritance. As for the present, liking to do two things at the same time (polychrony), or feeling stimulated by being in a hurry (or conversely, hating being in a hurry) will have an impact on the choice of store format for food shopping.

Many of the choices we make in our daily lives are, quite often unconsciously, dictated by our individual relationship to time, by the "time-related personality traits" we've just mentioned. They are more or less deeply rooted within us. This means that certain time management tendencies can run counter to our personality! That's why we find it hard to follow certain advice: if you don't want something natural, it'll come back!

The effects of waiting time

At the same time, the perception of elapsed time also varies according to the context and activity in which the individual finds himself. More often than not, it has nothing to do with the time actually elapsed. Schematically, unoccupied time seems longer. Think, for example, of the time spent waiting at the checkout. Music, colors and the presentation of information (e.g. estimated waiting time) also have a major influence on perceived duration. Finally, complex or new activities lead to an overestimation of the time needed to perform them.

But here again, it's difficult to generalize about the effects of this waiting time, as it all depends on our individual relationship to time. In a supermarket checkout queue, those who like to plan their tasks may become impatient with the delay in their daily to-do list, while polychronic multitasking enthusiasts may take the opportunity to answer their e-mails!

So what do you do? Slow down? Do several things at once? Speed up? In the end, in a modern society where we're told to slow down at all costs, it's probably more a question of finding the right balance between our individual time and our behavior that is the source of satisfaction.

Andréa Gourmelen, Lecturer in management science (marketing), University of Montpellier and Jeanne Lallement, Lecturer in Management Sciences, specializing in marketing, University of La Rochelle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.