Time is not merely the minutes at an individual’s disposal. Work hours, school start times, business hours, deadlines, wait times, caregiving responsibilities, and digital accessibility distribute time among people. They determine who can plan, who must be prepared, and who has to wait. Opportunity is shaped in the same way. A future becomes actionable when it can be imagined, shared with others, and linked to resources and pathways. This chapter therefore explores how time, expectations for the future, and rhythm can be analyzed as social conditions and used to open up realistic avenues for action.
In ABT, time and opportunity are intertwined. A person needs to be able to learn from the past, act in the present, and orient themselves toward the future. If one time horizon takes over, various blockages arise: nostalgia can turn the past into a definitive answer, constant focus on the present can make a person reactive, and fear can turn the future into a series of threats. Balance does not mean giving equal attention to all time periods every day. It means that there are functional connections between experience, the current situation, and possible future paths.
Social Time and Power Over Time
Social time is time organized through norms, institutions, and relationships. The clock measures the same minutes for everyone, but people’s control over those minutes varies. One person may decide when a meeting begins, another must coordinate multiple schedules, and a third is left waiting without any information. Power over time is the ability to determine the pace, sequence, availability, and how long others must wait. It is evident in who is allowed to interrupt, who can postpone, and whose delay has consequences.
A social time budget therefore distinguishes between fixed time, controllable time, and waiting time. Fixed time is already occupied by commitments that cannot easily be rescheduled. A person can allocate controllable time on their own or in collaboration with others. Waiting time occurs when another actor or institution controls the next step. These categories make the concept of time scarcity more precise. They also prevent efficiency from becoming a moral obligation when the problem is actually uncertain work hours, insufficient staffing, or poor coordination.
Create a Social Time Budget
Purpose: To highlight who controls time in everyday life and where a time-related problem needs to be addressed.
Choose a typical weekday and divide it into distinct time periods.
Label each period as fixed time, controllable time, or waiting time. Note any overlaps when multiple demands occur simultaneously.
Write down who or which institution determines the start, end, and flexibility of each fixed period.
Choose a time commitment that can be negotiated, coordinated, or made more predictable.
Formulate a concrete next step for the appropriate recipient and specify what an improvement would entail.
Afterward: Distinguish between better personal planning and a change in schedule, staffing, responsibilities, or decision-making processes.
Limitations and when not to do the exercise: Do not make time management a measure of a person’s worth. If working hours or caregiving responsibilities cannot be adjusted on an individual basis, the responsibility should not be placed on the individual.
Map out waiting times and interruptions
Purpose: To identify hidden time losses and determine who is likely to pass on uncertainty to others.
Choose a recurring situation where you are waiting, get interrupted, or need to be available.
Note how often the situation occurs and what you are unable to start while you are waiting or on standby.
Write down who benefits from the flexibility and who bears the cost in terms of time, concentration, or recovery.
Identify a possible rule: response time, uninterrupted period, order of priority, compensation, or clearer responsibilities.
Try requesting or proposing the rule within the relationship or organization that can actually change the conditions.
Afterward: Monitor whether the rule reduces uncertainty, not just whether it frees up minutes.
Limitations and when not to do this exercise: Seek support from a union, your organization, or another relevant entity if the person who controls the schedule could also subject you to retaliation.
Acceleration involves multiple processes
Hartmut Rosa distinguishes between technical acceleration, faster social change, and an increased pace of life. Technical acceleration means that transportation, communication, or production occur more quickly. Social change accelerates when knowledge, roles, relationships, and institutional arrangements have a shorter lifespan. The pace of life increases when more actions and experiences are squeezed into the same unit of time. These processes can reinforce one another, but they do not do so automatically. Faster technology can free up time and yet lead to more expected tasks.
Rosa describes dynamic stabilization: modern institutions require growth, innovation, or acceleration to maintain their form. This means that stagnation can be perceived as regression. At the same time, Judy Wajcman demonstrates that technology and time pressure are shaped in conjunction with the division of labor, norms, and everyday practices. Thus, the phone alone does not cause a fast pace. Demands for constant availability, workplace routines, and unequal care responsibilities determine how technology affects time.
Distinguish the three components of acceleration
Purpose: To avoid a general sense that everything is moving too fast and to identify the process that can actually be influenced.
Choose an area where the pace feels fast.
Write down what is technically faster, what changes more frequently, and what you’re trying to fit more of into your schedule.
Identify which demands come from an institution, which are maintained within a group, and which you can change yourself.
Choose the process that has the greatest impact on concentration, relationships, or recovery.
Formulate a change to a rule, technical practice, or expectation, and assign responsibility at the appropriate level.
Afterward: Use the three categories to clarify the problem; they do not all have to be present in the same situation.
Limitations and when the exercise should not be done: Do not disable technology needed for safety, work, or accessibility without first arranging a viable alternative.
Rhythms can interact or clash
Henri Lefebvre uses the concept of rhythm to describe recurring relationships between time, the body, space, and activity. Cyclical rhythms recur through, for example, the 24-hour day, mealtimes, and biological needs. Linear rhythms are organized by clock time, schedules, production, and repeated institutional demands. Everyday life consists of polyrhythm: multiple rhythms occurring simultaneously. When they support one another, a relative eurythm can emerge. When they collide and create disruption, Lefebvre refers to this as arrhythmia.
Rhythm analysis shifts the question from “Why can’t I focus?” to “Which rhythms are intersecting here?” The body’s need for sleep can clash with shift work, family schedules with public transportation, and work requiring concentration with an organization’s rhythm of interruptions. A person can sometimes change a habit, but lasting eurythmy may require coordination among several people or an institutional change.
Make a rhythm conflict visible
Purpose: To identify a recurring time-related problem that cannot be solved solely through greater self-discipline.
Choose a time when fatigue, stress, or conflict often arises.
Write down which rhythms intersect there: body, work, studies, family, transportation, meals, medication, or the institution’s hours of operation.
Mark which rhythms are cyclical and which are governed by linear schedules or deadlines.
Identify who can reschedule, share, or make a recurring time commitment more predictable.
Try a small-scale coordination and stick to the same time on at least two occasions.
Afterward: Assess whether the change reduces the conflict itself, not just whether you manage to squeeze in more.
Limitations and when the exercise should not be done: In cases of persistent sleep problems or a significant impact on daily functioning, a medical evaluation is needed. This exercise is not a substitute for such help.
Create a small eurythmy
Purpose: To coordinate several necessary rhythms around a limited part of the week.
Choose a recurring period of no more than two hours that is often fragmented.
List the activities, people, and institutional schedules that must be accommodated within that time.
Choose an order that takes into account physical needs, mutual coordination, and the task’s concentration requirements.
Make the start and end times clear to everyone involved and set aside a short, uninterrupted block of time.
Test the order twice and ask those involved if it works for them as well.
Afterward: Eurythmy is about coordination, not a perfect schedule. Adjust the order if someone else’s time has been inadvertently overlooked.
Limitations and when the exercise should not be done: Do not use the exercise to place the entire coordination burden of the family or work group on the person who already bears the most responsibility.
Historical consciousness connects eras
Historical consciousness is the ability to see the present as having emerged from past actions and institutions while remaining open to continuation. It is not the same as nostalgia or detailed knowledge of history. It involves asking which decisions, conflicts, habits, and resources have made a situation possible. It reveals that things that seem natural may be historically constructed and therefore, in principle, changeable.
For the individual, historical consciousness relieves the burden of two oversimplifications. One is that everything in the present is the result of personal choices. The other is that the past determines the future. Biography and social history both constrain and enable, but they are interpreted through contemporary relationships, resources, and actions. A useful historical analysis therefore concludes with a better question in the present, not with a definitive origin.
Trace a condition through time
Purpose: To understand how current scope for action has been built and where change can begin.
Choose a specific condition in your everyday life: working hours, housing, educational path, community activities, caregiving responsibilities, or digital regulations.
Write down when the condition became important and which decisions, people, or institutions shaped it.
Identify what has changed and what has continued out of habit, convention, or dependence on resources.
Identify a previous change that shows that the current order is not a given.
Formulate a question in the present tense directed at the person or institution that can influence the next step.
Afterward: Summarize in three points: origin, continued reproduction, and possible change.
Limitations and when the exercise should not be done: Do not draw definitive conclusions about family members’ motives without evidence. In the case of sensitive experiences, public sources and your own documents may be safer than confronting others.
Futures become active in the present
Ann Mische uses the concept of “projectivity” to describe people’s ability to imagine different future courses of action. The future influences the present through narratives, plans, forecasts, and institutional promises. Jens Beckert similarly demonstrates how imagined futures can coordinate investments and decisions even though the future cannot be known. A possibility, therefore, is not merely something that objectively exists. It must be capable of being perceived, described, and linked to a credible path forward.
The “horizon of expectations” refers to the range of futures that appear conceivable. This horizon is shaped by past experience, the group’s narratives, access to role models, information, and resources. A person may therefore have formal freedom but lack a conceivable path forward. Conversely, a powerful narrative of the future can spur action but also bind people to a promise that is not supported by real resources. Working with possibilities requires both broadening the range of alternatives and testing their conditions.
Broaden the Horizon of Expectations
Purpose: To make more paths to action visible without pretending that they are all equally accessible.
Choose an area where the future feels fixed or predetermined.
Write down the outcome you spontaneously expect and the experiences or messages that make it credible.
Identify two other possible continuations through a person, organization, biography, or public source with relevant experience.
For each path, describe the resources, relationships, decisions, and timeframes required.
Choose a low-risk action that could provide new information about one of the paths.
Afterward: Distinguish between a future that is conceivable, possible under certain conditions, and likely given current resources.
Limitations and when not to do this exercise: Do not base the plan on a role model whose circumstances are completely different without explicitly noting the differences. Seek guidance when making decisions involving financial or medical risks.
Make a project testable
Purpose: To translate a desired future into a short chain of action, feedback, and reassessment.
Formulate a desired change that is recognizable in everyday life, not as a trait you are supposed to become.
Write down why the change is important and which other people or shared values it affects.
Choose an initial experiment that is small, reversible, and can be completed within a week.
Determine what insights the experiment will provide and who can offer relevant feedback.
Set a deadline to continue, modify, or end the project based on what you’ve learned.
Afterward: A failed experiment is useful if it clarifies the conditions. It does not mean the person has failed.
Limitations and when the exercise should not be done: Do not experiment alone with anything that could threaten your livelihood, housing, safety, or health. In such cases, guidance and additional decision-makers are required.
Critical Optimism and Realistic Idealism
Mary Holmes uses “critical optimism” to describe an approach that takes problems and power seriously without making change unthinkable. ABT’s “realistic idealism” is closely aligned with this combination. An ideal provides direction; realism examines obstacles, resources, timelines, and unintended consequences. Without criticism, optimism easily becomes a demand for positive thinking. Without a sense of possibility, criticism can devolve into an analysis in which every action is already assumed to be constrained.
Possibility must therefore be grounded in partial agency. Partial agency means that people can influence certain aspects but not the entire situation. Action may consist of gathering knowledge, building a relationship, changing a local routine, or joining a collective process. Small steps are not always sufficient, but they can test whether a path exists and create connections that make larger action possible.
Write a critically optimistic vision of change
Purpose: To keep problems, opportunities, and conditions within the same analysis.
Choose a problem that affects you and define the specific situation in which it arises.
Describe the mechanisms, power dynamics, or resource shortages that perpetuate the problem.
Identify something that has already changed, works better in a different environment, or shows that the status quo is not completely fixed.
Formulate a desirable yet concrete state and the conditions that must change to achieve it.
Choose an action that builds knowledge, support, or coordination for the next step.
Afterward: Include both the obstacle and the opportunity in the final statement. Optimism should not be used to deny costs or power.
Limitations and when the exercise should not be done: Do not place the responsibility for a structural problem on those with the fewest resources. Choose the collective or institutional level when necessary.
Slow Speed and Temporal Citizenship
“Slow speed” is ABT’s term for slowing down where quality, reflection, and relationships require time, while simultaneously picking up the pace where unnecessary waiting or delayed action blocks the good life. It is not a call to always be slow. Deeply focused work can feel still but move a task forward quickly. A swift reaction to injustice can be important, while the decision on how an institution should change requires longer consideration.
Temporal citizenship means that conditions of time are treated as shared and political issues. The right to rest, predictable schedules, accessible services, and time for democratic participation determine who can participate. Building a functional rhythm therefore involves both self-organization and demands on the institutions that allocate time. Patience, then, is not about enduring subordination. It is the ability to persevere in a purposeful action whose results require time.
Choose where to slow down and where to speed up
Purpose: To adjust your pace according to the social demands of the task rather than according to a general ideal of speed or slowness.
Choose two current tasks: one where speed compromises quality and one where waiting blocks an important action.
For the first one, write down what needs more time: understanding, consultation, care, learning, or recovery.
For the second, write down the smallest decision or message that can be made now without pretending the entire issue is resolved.
Set aside a protected period of slowness and a clear timeframe for the swift action.
Monitor whether the combination reduces fragmentation and increases actual movement.
Afterward: Assess your pace based on the impact on quality, participation, and recovery, not on how busy you appear to be.
Limitations and when the exercise should not be done: Do not rush decisions that have major or irreversible consequences. Do not delay actions related to immediate safety or necessary support.
Set aside a block of time
Purpose: To create a continuous block of time for an important task and explore the social conditions required.
Choose a task that requires uninterrupted attention and set aside a realistic block of time.
Write down which interruptions, roles, and technical signals typically disrupt the block.
Establish a clear start time, a suitable location, and a message for people who would otherwise expect you to be available.
Complete the block with a single main task and finish by writing down the next concrete step.
Note which conditions supported your concentration and which ones need to be addressed before the next session.
Afterward: Use the block for direction, not to squeeze more work into an already unsustainable daily routine.
Limitations and when the exercise should not be done: Protected time must not be created by taking someone else’s caregiving or availability for granted. Coordinate fairly.
Connect a future generation to a decision in the present
Purpose: To give the distant future a concrete but limited place in a current decision.
Choose an everyday or local decision that has consequences extending beyond the next month.
Write down who is affected now and which future users, residents, members, or relatives may be affected later.
Identify a resource, institution, or environment that needs to be managed rather than consumed.
Formulate a requirement or practice that improves the handover to future generations.
Determine who needs to be involved so that the decision does not remain merely a personal intention.
Afterward: Keep the future perspective proportionate and linked to an actual decision in the present.
Limitations and when the exercise should not be done: Do not use uncertain future scenarios to scare or silence those who bear the costs today. The balance between present and future needs must be clear.
Build momentum without accelerating the pace across the board
Purpose: To use a functioning area as a foundation for a first step in a more challenging area.
List one to three practices or relationships that already provide you with some stability, knowledge, or capacity for action.
Choose an area where you’ve hit a roadblock and specify the smallest concrete change you want to try.
Link an existing resource to that step: a person, place, routine, skill, or time.
Take this step without simultaneously initiating several other changes.
Check to see if the step generated new information, a connection, or an opportunity for follow-up.
Afterward: Momentum means that the next action becomes easier to see or carry out; it does not mean that all parts must accelerate.
Limitations and when not to do this exercise: Do not eliminate a stabilizing routine just to gain momentum. In cases of overload, the first step may be to reduce the load or provide support.
Coordinate the Past, Present, and Future
Purpose: To conclude the chapter with a temporally coherent and socially grounded action plan.
Choose an issue where you want to create a real opportunity in the coming weeks.
Write a historical section explaining how the situation has come about without framing it as fate.
Describe current resources, scheduling conflicts, and decision points.
Formulate two future paths and the conditions that distinguish them.
Choose an initial experiment, a partner, and a specific time for reassessment.
Afterward: Summarize the plan in three sentences: what you’re taking from the past, what you’re doing now, and what the experiment is intended to reveal.
Limitations and when not to do this exercise: The plan should be testable and open to change. Seek professional support when the issue involves medical treatment, legal matters, debt, or other high-risk situations.
Concept Overview
This overview presents the key concepts used in Chapters 31–32. The concepts are listed in the order they appear in the chapters.
Vitality: a sustained capacity to become engaged, respond to the world, and participate in action; not the same as intense stimulation or constant activity.
Meaning: the connections between what a person values, does, and is connected to, as expressed through language, practices, relationships, and institutions.
Flourishing: the development of human capacities and relationships in a life that also makes room for enjoyment, rest, and social sustainability.
Reflexive emotionality: taking a feeling seriously while simultaneously examining the norms, relationships, and conditions that shape it before choosing a course of action.
Emotional energy: Collins’s concept for relatively sustained drive, confidence, and initiative that can result from social interaction.
Interaction ritual: a situation characterized by shared presence, focus, and atmosphere that can create solidarity, symbols, and emotional energy.
Resonance: Rosa’s concept of a relationship in which something in the world touches a person, the person responds with their own voice, and the relationship can transform both.
More-than-life: Simmel’s term for the movement, intensification, and creativity of life.
More-than-life: Simmel’s term for forms, works, ideals, and commitments that transcend the individual moment and provide direction.
Eudaimonic hedonism: ABT’s balance between flourishing through meaningful action and pleasure or desire, which can also have intrinsic value.
Eudaimonia offloading: organizing meaningful responsibility through division of labor, routines, and institutions so that a single person does not have to bear the entire burden.
Social time: time structured by norms, institutions, and relationships, such as schedules, deadlines, waiting periods, and availability requirements.
Power over time: the ability to determine the pace, sequence, availability, and how long others must wait.
Committed time: time occupied by demands that the person cannot easily reschedule.
Controllable time: time that a person can allocate on their own or together with others.
Waiting time: time for which the next step is controlled by another person or institution.
Technological acceleration: increased speed in transportation, communication, or production.
Acceleration of social change: the phenomenon whereby knowledge, roles, relationships, and institutional arrangements have a shorter lifespan.
Increased pace of life: the squeezing of more actions or experiences into the same unit of time.
Dynamic stabilization: Rosa’s term for the fact that an institution requires growth, innovation, or acceleration to maintain its form.
Rhythm: a recurring relationship between time, body, space, and activity.
Polyrhythm: the simultaneous occurrence of multiple rhythms in everyday life or an environment.
Eurythmy: a relative coordination in which multiple rhythms can function together.
Arrhythmia: A collision of rhythms that creates recurring disruption or strain.
Historical consciousness: viewing the present as having emerged from past actions and institutions while remaining open to future developments.
Projectivity: Misch’s concept for the ability to imagine and explore multiple future courses of action.
Horizon of Expectations: the range of futures that appear conceivable based on experience, narratives, relationships, and resources.
Critical optimism: An attitude that takes problems and power seriously without making change unthinkable.
Realistic idealism: ABT’s combination of a desirable direction with a concrete analysis of obstacles, resources, time, and consequences.
Partial agency: a real but limited capacity for action in which a person can influence certain aspects but cannot control the entire situation.
Slow speed: slowing down where quality and relationships require time, and picking up the pace where unnecessary waiting blocks important action.
Temporal citizenship: treating temporal conditions as shared issues of participation, rights, responsibilities, and institutional distribution.
References
Beckert, J. (2016). Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics. Harvard University Press.
Collins, R. (2004). Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton University Press.
Holmes, M. (2016). Sociology for Optimists. SAGE.
Lefebvre, H. (2004). Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday Life. Continuum.
Mische, A. (2009). “Projects and Possibilities: Researching Futures in Action.” Sociological Forum, 24(3), 694–704.
Rosa, H. (2013). Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. Columbia University Press.
Rosa, H. (2019). Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World. Polity.
Simmel, G. (1971). On Individuality and Social Forms. University of Chicago Press.
Taylor, C. (2007). A Secular Age. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Wajcman, J. (2015). Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism. University of Chicago Press.