A beautiful way of looking at Time

In his introduction to the Pomodoro technique, Francesco Cirillo gives some context to how he thought about and developed the idea of the method.

He says there are two ways of thinking about time, described by Bergson and Minkowski.

One is the Abstract way. The other is to view time as a succession of Events.

The Abstract way of looking at time creates more anxiety and is counterproductive. Cirillo offers his Pomodoro technique as a solution; it is based on viewing time as a succession of events.

I'm wondering how looking at time in a particular way leads to such a big difference in how one works.

The Abstract way leads to thinking about time in a linear manner - imagine a line in dark space marked at regular intervals with seconds, minutes, hours and so on. This line extends into space in both directions - to infinity (since we don't know when time 'began' or when it will 'end'). You are standing on this line. This is your line. If you look around, the people in your life are on each of their own, similar lines.

And these lines are moving, constantly. Time is constant, elusive, you can't stop it. You are either running or walking or crawling on it, depending on what's happening at the moment (I'll let Einstein tell you why this passage of time seems so relative). Everything you do is measured against this passage of time, secondary to this movement.  This constant  measuring (conscious or unconscious), added to the comparisons made with others around you 'more successful' in managing time creates anxiety. As Cirillo says,

'We lose our élan vital, our vital contact, which enables us to accomplish things. “Two hours have gone by and I’m still not done; two days have gone by and I’m still not done.” In a moment of weakness, the purpose of the activity at hand is often no longer even clear.

What's worse, you don't know when this movement will suddenly stop. The moment to moment transition makes it look like you have an infinite amount of time left but you know at the back of your mind that you have no idea when you will suddenly drop off the line.

As opposed to this, you can measure time in events. Here too, time doesn't stop. However, you are now measuring time in terms of what is happening and what you are doing. Immediately, I can see how this approach leads to being more aware, more mindful (I have to plug my favorite word sooner or later). Perhaps that is the reason why he says this approach does not cause as much anxiety. Instead of fretting about the time passing by, you are now primarily looking at what you are doing with that time. You are actually living in the moment, to use the cliche.

[Reminds me of how a common piece of advice in schooldays was to measure how much was studied instead of how many hours were put in for studies. Of course, the latter way of thinking was also heavily encouraged by some disciplinarians. I suspect its popularity was because of how convenient and tidy it sounds - 'put in 5 hours of study daily' or 'pull an all-nighter' sounds more impressive and awesome than saying 'read and understand two chapters and answer 20 questions'.]

Cirillo has created the rest of the technique based on this concept and other ideas. Quite impressive. I like that the method isn't rocket science. It really reinforces some of the good habits we commonly learn as children and fine-tunes them, while keeping things simple. The simplicity makes it easier to inculcate it into a habit.