How times have changed. Maybe it’s not so much the times that have changed but how we have changed during these times. Two years ago, we would never have imagined how the coronavirus pandemic was going to change the way we spend, perceive and talk about time.
Physicists define time as the progression of events from the past to the present into the future. Living through a pandemic, we can reflect on the past and what we did pre-pandemic, bide our time in the present, and look forward to a future when we no longer fear the coronavirus.
Every year the American Time Use Survey, overseen by the Labor Department, asks thousands of people to track every minute of a single day. It measures the amount of time people spend doing various activities, such as paid work, child care, sleeping, volunteering and socializing. Most years, the data reflects the ways that changes in technology, society and the economy subtly shift how we spend our days. In 2020, the data highlighted the ways our use of time was abruptly disrupted. Interestingly enough, even the time-use survey’s work was interrupted. Data collection was paused in mid-March 2020 because of the coronavirus outbreak and did not resume until mid-May 2020.
