Consider the following comments on time.
A society that sells time saving devices has somehow ended up with less time, not more.
We measure progress by how fast we can do things, rarely by whether they were worth doing.
The clock was invented to coordinate work, and ever since it has been mistaken for life itself.
Lost time is never found again.
Benjamin Franklin
Every culture decides who is allowed to be slow and who must always hurry.
Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
A defensible thesis is that modern societies have confused the efficient use of time with a good use of it, treating speed as an end rather than a means. Open by granting the obvious gain, that machines and schedules have freed millions from drudgery and let us coordinate at a scale earlier ages could not. Then complicate it: the same tools that save minutes have raised the expected pace of everything, so the saved time is immediately spent, and the promise of leisure recedes. A strong third move notices that the pressure of time is unevenly distributed, since the wealthy can buy slowness while the poor are made to wait and to rush at once. Caution: resist the nostalgic fantasy that pre modern life was unhurried and serene, which forgets that scarcity and labour governed the clockless past far more harshly than any calendar governs us.