As Heraclitus said, no [person] can step into the same river twice
As Marc Andreessen so nearly said, no person can pee in the same pool twice
Kailash Awati writes about the two tributaries of time. What follows is a trivialization of his work.
If flow is a state of immersion, a state of grace then the gantt chart and other time management devices (the timesheet, the critical path, cadence meeting, the timebox, the sprint) are a set of dams and canals and artificial channels that seek to harness and control creativity into the irrigation of productive and manageable labour. A hydraulic despotism worthy of Karl Wittfogel. Or hydraulic theatre worth of Versailles.
I don’t write much about my current work directly. But I am a nerd of one type who manages nerds of another. Their happy place is to go deep into problems. To lose themselves in the hedonistic flow of investigation and mastery, the sensuality of transactions and rules*. I want to protect that flow while also ensuring that they do not get lost or disconnected. So we have a rule that you can disappear for up to three hours but you must tell people when you are coming back. And if I call you then you must pick up because the world is ending.
I want protect this part of the stream so the flow does not become turbid and dead.
My own flow happens in writing. Hours go by. I write not because I want to (although I do). I write because I have an almost biological urge to expel these thoughts and ideas from my mind onto the screen. Once done, the sense of relief is palpable.
And then there are the gantt charts and timelines and roadmaps and other works of speculative fiction. Other not wholly useless comfort blankets against the unpredictability of tomorrow.
But as Kailash says, they also bring together our turbulent flows into something laminar. We experience all kinds of time at once and these things are like the click track of organizational music. And click tracks are useful. But they should not be mistaken for the music itself.
*To those of who know me and the field, I’ve just made it sexier than you expected - or indeed wanted.