Close-up considerations
To be fashionable means to conform.
We can express our individuality by refusing to wear what other people do.
Can a City businessman wear shorts on a hot summer day while at work?
The general style, or fashion, limits the expression of our individuality.
Fashionable dress helps us only merge into the crowd losing our individuality.
Individuality can be expressed only through small details like buttons, collars, cuffs, etc.
Unit Seven.
Open-up ideas
Someone else should organise our time for us, for instance, by arranging classes.
We are subject to the discipline of a routine.
Self-employed people (free-lance) can only survive if they can organise their time efficiently.
One should not be extremely methodical, and should work by fits and starts.
It’s advisable to keep everything in order to be able to find necessary information at once.
Hanging around, flicking through magazines, chatting with people – are a waste of time.
Enjoy your time-wasting, don’t feel guilty.
Waiting is always a waste of time.
Text for discussion
Everybody wastes time. Instead of doing his homework, the schoolboy watches television. Instead of writing her essay, the student goes out with her friends. Instead of reading his book, the commuter gazes out of the window. The writer neglects his work, and wanders round the house making cups of coffee and daydreaming. They all have good intentions, but they keep putting off the moment when they must start work. As a consequence they begin to feel guilty, and then waste even more time wishing they had not allowed themselves to be distracted. When someone else is organising our time for us, as for instance during lessons or working hours, we do not necessarily work more efficiently but at least we are subject to the discipline of a routine. It is when we are responsible for organising our own time that the need for self-discipline arises. Self-employed people, particularly those engaged in such creative activities as writing, can only survive, let alone prosper, if they can organise their time efficiently.
I know two writers who seem to me to have got to grips with the problem, but in quite different ways. Bob is extremely methodical. He arrives at his office at 9 and is creative until 12.30. At 2 he returns to his desk and is creative until 5, and then he goes home and switches off until the following morning.
Alan would deny that you can regulate your creativity in this way, by the clock as it were. He works in inspired bursts, often missing meals and sleep in order to get down on paper the ideas which are in his head. Such periods of intensive activity are usually followed by days of lethargy, when he potters around his flat listening to Mozart and flicking through magazines.
Their places of work reflect their styles. Bob’s books are neatly arranged on the shelves by his desk, he can always find at once the book he wants, and there is not a single book in his office which is not directly relevant to his work. Alan, on the other hand, has books and magazines all over the place, some on shelves, some in piles on the floor and the table, even some on and under his bed. Moreover they are about every subject under the sun, most of them apparently unconnected with his work; needless to say, there is no hint of system or order. All the same he has a marvellous knack of making use of the most unlikely information, which he gleans from this motley collection, to illuminate and enliven his books. Bob, as you might imagine, has an immaculate filing system, keeps a diary, and always carries a small notebook in which to jot down things he has to do. If Alan ever made a list of things to do, he would immediately lose the paper on which he had written it. He now has a novel and rather desperate system for remembering something. He writes it down on the largest piece of paper he can find. Then, instead of folding the paper neatly, he crumples it up and stuffs it into his jacket pocket, where it makes such an obtrusive bulge that he cannot possible forget that it is there-until he changes his jacket that is.
Both Bob and Alan have managed to organise their lives in such a way that they are able to produce work of very high quality. Obviously each works in the way that suits his character, and it would be foolish to take either as a model. All the same, there is a lot we can learn from them. For example, Bob has the excellent idea of setting targets for each week. As long as he is ‘on target’, he has no qualms about taking an afternoon off in the middle of the week. In other words, he will occasionally waste time deliberately, rather in the way that you might treat yourself one day to a lunch you could not normally afford. It seems to be a much better idea to relax and enjoy your time-wasting, rather than to feel guilty about it both at the time and afterwards.
Although Alan may appear to be careless about time compared to Bob, he is in fact very conscious of what he calls the ‘interstice’s time, that is, all those minutes in a day when you are between the end of one activity and the beginning of the next. A good example of this is the time we spend waiting for appointments and buses, or travelling to and from work. I know one man who spends two hours every day commuting to work by train. Most of us would fritter this time away in snoozing, chatting or doing crossword puzzles, but he has managed to use the time to study for an Open University degree. Alan would approve of this. He takes it a stage further in dealing with the potentially wasted hours when friends pop in for a chat. He will skilfully turn the conversation around to something related to the work he is engaged on, and as often as not will make use of parts of the conversation in the next chapter he writes. In this way his friends so far from distracting him and wasting his time actually make a contribution to his work, albeit unwittingly. So, although it may be true that we all waste time, we can learn from people like the two writers the techniques for wasting as little as possible, and for not minding very much when we do.