Alexa Hazel on the Pomodoro Technique:
Beneath videos explaining the PT, people will often comment that they have been unwittingly using the method for years — Taylor’s logic endures, but its mechanism has shifted. For many, what was once an external system of control has been internalized. Factory managers discipline the bodies of their employees; white-collar workers now discipline their own souls. In Nikil Saval’s neat formulation, “the arc of scientific management is long, but it bends toward self-Taylorizing.” [Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management, 1911]
In 2020, “self-Taylorizing” is not about optimizing paid work, but about optimizing everything, including one’s method for optimization. The influential political theorist Wendy Brown calls this contemporary subject Homo oeconomicus. All human activity, regardless of whether it bears the potential for financial profit, is modeled on the market. We understand ourselves as human capital. We self-enhance to “attract investors” and “strengthen competitive positioning.” Before COVID-19, Homo oeconomicus spent his long weekend in Peru for a course on leadership development and posted pictures from Machu Picchu to Instagram. Or, he criticized the course, skipped it, accumulated social capital as a renegade, and still posted pics from Machu Picchu. All returns on self-investment ought to be optimized. And because optimization cannot be established without data, all human conduct must also be quantified. A body that measures calories, steps, heartrate, Pomodoros, sexual potency, sleep, swipes, likes, content output, and optionality is a perfectible body. What’s quantifiable is certifiable and comparable. Humanity’s coarse incommensurability is smoothed into a universal language of winners and losers. For a fee of 325€, it’s possible to become an official Pomodoro Technique Certified Practitioner. The user need only demonstrate how the tomato allowed her to “[overcome] a personal challenge.”
Honestly, the essay could end, full stop, with the next line.
No one should be surprised by what psychologically follows.
It goes on, and it’s fascinating, true, and necessary to say, but also easily summed up:
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.
P.S. This paragraph:
It may seem strange that we need scaffolds in the realm of freedom, but life-defining activity isn’t necessarily fun or easy. It’s often stressful and boring. Let’s say, for example, that you identify as a writer. Hägglund reminds us that being a writer consists in the daily struggle to be a writer. The daily struggle to be a writer often looks appalling. “Precisely because [writing] is so important to me, I can become paralyzed by anxiety over the stakes and do something else instead.” To have writer’s block does not mean that you no longer care about writing. Just the opposite: writing is so important that the risk of failing to write or failing to write well is almost inarticulable. It’s easier to write for an hour today than to write your novel today, and there’s a difference between the fruit of a practical identity and its everyday experience. Tedium, however, resists representation, which is why it’s easy to forget that unremarkable hours are at the heart of every breakthrough. A little rule can help you step outside of a vicious loop and begin.