We live convinced that speed is a virtue. We answer messages while walking, listen to podcasts at double speed, look for the fastest line at the supermarket, and celebrate when an app saves us five minutes. Without realizing it, we’ve turned our lives into a constant race against the clock.
However, the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm pointed out decades ago a paradox that seems more relevant today than ever: “Modern man thinks he is wasting time when he does not act quickly. Yet he doesn’t know what to do with the time he gains, except waste it.” His observation is unsettling because it highlights a contradiction: we strive to save time, but we rarely know how to enjoy the minutes we manage to wrest from routine.
The obsession with optimizing every minute
In part, this sense of urgency is fueled by our current culture. Social media shows us people who seem to make the most of every minute of the day. Productivity books promise to give us an extra hour each day. Technology eliminates downtime. As a result, we no longer wait for a letter, develop photographs, or look up information in a library. Everything happens instantly, which fosters a relationship with time in which any pause generates a feeling of guilt.
Paradoxically, the faster the world spins, the greater the feeling that we don’t have enough time. As we adapt to this accelerated pace, what yesterday seemed like extraordinary progress becomes today’s new standard.
If replying to an email in two days was perfectly acceptable before, now we expect a response in just a few hours. If a purchase used to take a week to arrive, today we get impatient if it’s not at home the next day. Speed is no longer an advantage but an expectation that must be met at all costs.
Obviously, the need to be constantly busy has a psychological cost. Living at a fast pace keeps our alert system activated, makes it difficult to rest, and makes us think that time is a resource that is always scarce.
The irony is clear: we’ve never had so many tools to save time, and yet few generations have felt so intensely that time is never enough. Not because the day has fewer hours, but because we’ve learned to fill every single one until there’s simply no room left to live.
The brain is not designed to live in “fast mode”
Our brain naturally alternates between two main modes of operation. On the one hand, there’s task-oriented mode, which we use to solve problems, concentrate, and achieve goals. But there’s another equally important and often overlooked mode: the so-called default mode network, which activates when we’re seemingly doing nothing.
During these moments of mental rest, fundamental processes occur: we consolidate memories, reorganize experiences, soothe emotions, and foster creativity. That’s why many good ideas arise precisely while we’re walking, showering, or simply looking out the window.
When we fill every little gap with our phones, a TV show, or another task, we eliminate those “empty” spaces our brains need to reorganize. The curious thing is that we often interpret these moments as a waste of time, when in reality they are a psychological investment in our well-being.
When productivity invades every corner of life
One of the most striking cultural shifts is that we’ve stopped valuing rest for its own sake. Before, rest meant simply resting. Now, even rest must be “productive.” We do yoga to perform better at work, we meditate to be more efficient, we walk counting steps, we listen to audiobooks while exercising, and we even turn vacations into a list of places to visit.
It seems that even leisure time must justify its usefulness. And that means we’ve developed an instrumental mindset that leads us to value activities solely for the benefit they generate, and not for the sheer pleasure of experiencing them.
The problem is that many of the most enriching experiences, such as an unhurried conversation, contemplating the landscape, reading for pleasure, or playing with a pet, lose their essence precisely when we turn them into tools to achieve something else.
It’s a mistake to think that all our time has to be productive because that leads us to feel the need to justify every minute. Well-being doesn’t depend solely on what we do, but also on the space we create for simply being and existing.
In fact, people who experience higher levels of life satisfaction often set aside time without a specific goal: taking aimless walks, conversing without looking at the clock, cooking without rushing, or simply sitting for a few minutes doing absolutely nothing. They aren’t wasting time; they’re living.
True luxury is not being in a hurry
Fromm does not criticize efficiency, but the belief that living consists solely of making the most of every minute, because there is a huge difference between saving time and giving meaning to that time.
We can better organize our schedules, automate tasks, and respond to messages in seconds. All of that has advantages. There’s no denying it. The problem arises when, once we’ve gained those minutes, we don’t know how to use them calmly and feel compelled to fill them with activity.
Perhaps that’s why so many people end the day exhausted, yet with the feeling of not having truly lived. Therefore, perhaps the question isn’t how much time we can save, but rather: “If you had two completely free hours tomorrow, would you know how to enjoy them… or would you feel the need to fill them?” Your answer makes all the difference.
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