Time Work: Customizing Temporal Experience

TLDR

Existing research on agency and temporality has largely ignored each other, and early social psychology has treated the self as a fixed entity. This paper integrates agency and temporality through the concept of work, defined as individual or interpersonal efforts to create or suppress particular kinds of temporal experience. The authors conducted semistructured, open‑ended interviews with 398 participants to elicit descriptions of how they engage in time work. Analysis revealed five dominant themes—control of duration, frequency, sequence, timing, and allocation—showing that while time work reflects self‑determination, it largely reinforces cultural reproduction.

Abstract

The literature on agency neglects temporality; the literature on temporality neglects agency. This paper integrates these largely separate lines of research with the concept work, which is defined as individual or interpersonal efforts to create or suppress particular kinds of temporal experience. Semistructured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 398 subjects, who were asked to describe ways in which they engage in time work. Analytic induction yielded five themes: in descending order of prevalence, the subjects reported efforts to control or manipulate duration, frequency, sequence, timing, and allocation. The variety and prevalence of time work suggests the sovereignty of self-determination; for the most part, however, time work contributes to cultural reproduction. From the beginnings of social psychology, it has been an article of faith that the self