I don’t know about you but time management is one of those things I always seek to get better at, given there is plenty I’d like to do (especially in writing) but there are still only 24 hours in any one day!
I like my lists, my calendar has plenty of notes scribbled all over it, and by the end of the week, I’ve usually achieved a reasonable amount of what I set out to do. I’ve learned to carve up bigger tasks (like editing my novel) into smaller chunks and accept there are simply some tasks that can’t be done all at once, no matter how much I’d like to do so!
CAN you manage time? Pixabay image
So far my real success in time management is when I remember to change the clocks backwards and forwards as required, though often my better half beats me to it! (Is it just me or is there always at least one you forget to do? It’s either the car clock or the central heating one. I am pleased my phone and computer update themselves. That’s two less to worry about! Having said that, I would be happy to pick one time and stick with it but that’s another debate for another time, pun totally intended).
The world’s most famous clock tower though Big Ben itself gets its name from the bell – Pixabay image
My mother never bothered with time management as such. Certain days were set aside for certain tasks and that was that. Monday was ALWAYS wash day (unless Christmas Day fell on a Monday). Tuesdays saw her get the ironing done and so on. But in her own way, Mum mastered her time and used it as she saw best (which ultimately is all any of us can do).
A common topic in science fiction and fantasy is mastering time. This I think reflects on the very human desire to have more time than we actually do have.
I’d argue reading, relaxing, being with friends and family etc are excellent ways to spend time even though you are doing “nothing” here. Pixabay image
One of the perils of Doctor Who is in NOT upsetting history, meddling with time has consequences, yet the Doctor carries on and meddles anyway! I wouldn’t want to be the Doctor, even if I could be. The temptation to change time to suit me would be far too strong to resist.
The most famous time machine of them all – The Tardis – Pixabay image
The consequences of doing so could be dreadful, which is the constant theme running through most stories about time travel. Rightly so too. Actions have consequences, no matter how small. It doesn’t take much to change history. Think about what would have happened had a certain assassination had not happened in 1914 or 1963 come to that. Talking of the latter…
Red Dwarf many years ago had a wonderful episode showing our heroes unintentionally saving JFK (they knocked the assassin out of a window by mistake) and then saw how the world changed (and not for the better) so had to go back and put things right.
Too much to do, too little time perhaps – Pixabay image
In the Harry Potter series Hermione Granger is given a Time Turner so she can be in two places at once as she wants to study several subjects and this was the only way for her to do that, but I thought it was quite right at the end of this particular book, she was happy to give the thing back, finding the whole process exhausting. Well you would, wouldn’t you? (I’d worry about losing track of what I was doing where and when).
The Time Turner – Pixabay image
But ignoring the practicalities for a moment, if you could travel in time, where would you go and why? Just as importantly, what would you do and why?
I can think of a few things I’d do.
1. Go back and find out what really did happen to the Princes in the Tower so Richard III is cleared or condemned but with proof behind that. We’d know then. (Naturally I’d like to think Richard would be cleared).
2. Arrange for the invention of the printing press and the improvement in literacy rates to happen much sooner than they did, on the grounds I’d want as many as possible to get the benefit of this.
The printing press – image via Pixabay
3. Arrange for the invention of the flushing lavatory and Joseph Bazelgette’s work to be done much sooner. How many lives would have been spared over the centuries thanks to improved sanitation, which is one of those blessings it is far too easy to take for granted?
(The church I go to usually has an annual charity project and we select who we support on a “home” and “away” basis. One year we support a UK based charity, another year we look for overseas ones etc. One I was pleased we supported was Water Aid. See the link for more on what they do though I have noticed I sometimes get notes about what they do with my water bill every year. Now there is advertising I understand and approve of!).
It is thanks to the railways we have standardised time here in the UK – Pixabay image
As for time travel, I really don’t know about going into the future though. I can see all the disadvantages of that and one of the biggest is bound to be the fact I wouldn’t like what I saw there. When I came back “here”, would my life be coloured by what I had seen? I think so.
Wormhole – Pixabay image
So time travel then for me would be going back to favourite periods of history and finding out for myself what life had been like. I have the suspicion I wouldn’t stay in any of these periods for long. I’d want to get back to the present day fairly quickly.
Crossing the Meredian line at Greenwich – Image by Allison Symes
H G Wells’ The Time Machine popularised the idea of time travel as a story device. This was first published in 1895, and over a century later, the idea of it still fascinates and encourages stories. Maybe one day it will actually be possible.
If you spot this in your mirror, you are definitely in the wrong time zone – Pixabay image
Science fiction can sometimes become science fact (though I’m quite happy to pass on the idea of TheDay of the Triffids ever becoming “real”! Can you imagine the chaos in the garden centres as plants took over the world?! Am loathe to say more in case I give the plot away but it is a great book and I highly recommend it.).
Humanity is at its best when it strives whether it is in the fields of athletics, the creative arts, the sciences and so on. There is much to appreciate in the present day then and perhaps we should stop wondering about making time do our bidding.
Time travel to the past – a good idea or not? Pixabay image
Going back in time, even if is only through the pages of a well written book, should bring that appreciation to the fore. The important thing is humanity shouldn’t ever stop striving. The day we do we are all in trouble.
I'm a published flash fiction and short story writer, as well as a blogger. My fiction work has appeared in anthologies from Cafelit and Bridge House Publishing.
My first flash fiction collection, From Light to Dark and Back Again, was published by Chapeltown Books in 2017.
My follow-up, Tripping the Flash Fantastic, was published by Chapeltown Books in 2020.
I adore the works of many authors but my favourites are Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett.
I like to describe my fiction as fairytales with bite.
I also write for Writers' Narrative magazine and am one of their editors. I am a freelance editor separately and have had many short stories published online and in anthologies.
Thank you, Janet. And yes I thought that was well done in the Rosa Parks episode of Doctor Who. I like Graham as a character, think he is coming along well.
To prove there were no time travellers, Stephen Hawking arranged a party on the 10th but did not send out the invitations until the 11th. No one came to the party.
Or were those time travellers SH tried to invite to his party just plain rude and never responded to the RSVPs, even from someone as distinguished as him, Mike?!
Joking aside, does that mean though that time travel can’t happen at all? I’m loathe to rule out the possibility of it at all, due to so often in our history something has been thought impossible and later, often much later, someone has achieved that same something. Our great inventors would all have faced their “nay-sayers” and I’m glad to say proved them wrong generally. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, for one, must have faced that all the time.
The other question to ponder is, assuming there ARE time travellers out there, do they think we’re not worth visiting at this current period in our development and that’s why we’ve not come across any?
Any discussion of time travel requires an awareness of the difference e between logical difficulties and empirical difficulties. Some problems cannot be solved because they are illogical, based on a misunderstanding, such a search for the east pole which will never be found, not because it needs dedicated scientists but because it would be incoherent. Non of our great inventors or discoverers will find the east pole.
There are problems with time travel, often expressed as the ‘kill your own grandfather paradox’, whereby the traveller invents a time machine travels back in time and somehow kills his grandfather thus making it impossible for him to have existed and make his machine.
In one of my books on space exploration I considered tachyon theory according to which tachyons – hypothetical particles that cannot travel slower than the speed of light – create a theoretical possibility of time travel. But if tachyons can transmit information faster than light, then according to relativity theory they violate causality, leading to logical paradoxes of the “kill your own grandfather” type. This is often illustrated with thought experiments such as the tachyonic antitelephone which is a hypothetical device in theoretical physics that could be used to send signals into one’s own past. But Einstein in 1907 presented a thought experiment of how faster-than-light signals can lead to a paradox of causality.
I have toyed with a variation of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to provide a resolution to the grandfather paradox. It involves the time traveller arriving in a different universe than the one they came from. However, Stephen Hawkings argued that since the traveller arrives in a different universe’s history and not their own history, this is not “genuine” time travel .
I recently saw an SF movie where a young man whose fiancé was killed after being run down by a truck, attempted a version of Schrodinger’s cat experiment. According to the many worlds hypothesis the solution to the paradox of the cat being both alive and dead at the same time is that it actually lives on in a parallel universe. The young man substituted himself for the cat, survived in a parallel universe where he found his sweetheart, but was unable to save her because he ended up as the driver of the truck that killed her. In this way he was unable to change the past.
Many thanks, David. I like the sound of the SF movie. I have a great deal of sympathy for the idea that if time travel was ever possible, something would be in place to STOP the “kill your own grandfather” situation from ever happening. There would have to be some rules somewhere – otherwise history, far from being a constant thing, would always be in a state of flux.
I’d also have sympathy with the going to any universe other than your own scenario. I can see what Hawking is getting at but I would say it was still genuine time travel. You just cannot travel on your own timeline (a common topic in Doctor Who and rightly so too).
Yet another brilliant article, Allison. Well done!
Not changing the course of history – making the Rosa Parks episode in Doctor Who so poignant.
“Yaz: We’re here. We’re part of the story. Part of history.
Graham: No no, I don’t want to be part of this.
The Doctor: We have to. I’m sorry. We have to not help her.”
It was painful watching Graham struggling with his conscience.
Thank you, Janet. And yes I thought that was well done in the Rosa Parks episode of Doctor Who. I like Graham as a character, think he is coming along well.
To prove there were no time travellers, Stephen Hawking arranged a party on the 10th but did not send out the invitations until the 11th. No one came to the party.
Or were those time travellers SH tried to invite to his party just plain rude and never responded to the RSVPs, even from someone as distinguished as him, Mike?!
Joking aside, does that mean though that time travel can’t happen at all? I’m loathe to rule out the possibility of it at all, due to so often in our history something has been thought impossible and later, often much later, someone has achieved that same something. Our great inventors would all have faced their “nay-sayers” and I’m glad to say proved them wrong generally. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, for one, must have faced that all the time.
The other question to ponder is, assuming there ARE time travellers out there, do they think we’re not worth visiting at this current period in our development and that’s why we’ve not come across any?
Any discussion of time travel requires an awareness of the difference e between logical difficulties and empirical difficulties. Some problems cannot be solved because they are illogical, based on a misunderstanding, such a search for the east pole which will never be found, not because it needs dedicated scientists but because it would be incoherent. Non of our great inventors or discoverers will find the east pole.
There are problems with time travel, often expressed as the ‘kill your own grandfather paradox’, whereby the traveller invents a time machine travels back in time and somehow kills his grandfather thus making it impossible for him to have existed and make his machine.
In one of my books on space exploration I considered tachyon theory according to which tachyons – hypothetical particles that cannot travel slower than the speed of light – create a theoretical possibility of time travel. But if tachyons can transmit information faster than light, then according to relativity theory they violate causality, leading to logical paradoxes of the “kill your own grandfather” type. This is often illustrated with thought experiments such as the tachyonic antitelephone which is a hypothetical device in theoretical physics that could be used to send signals into one’s own past. But Einstein in 1907 presented a thought experiment of how faster-than-light signals can lead to a paradox of causality.
I have toyed with a variation of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to provide a resolution to the grandfather paradox. It involves the time traveller arriving in a different universe than the one they came from. However, Stephen Hawkings argued that since the traveller arrives in a different universe’s history and not their own history, this is not “genuine” time travel .
I recently saw an SF movie where a young man whose fiancé was killed after being run down by a truck, attempted a version of Schrodinger’s cat experiment. According to the many worlds hypothesis the solution to the paradox of the cat being both alive and dead at the same time is that it actually lives on in a parallel universe. The young man substituted himself for the cat, survived in a parallel universe where he found his sweetheart, but was unable to save her because he ended up as the driver of the truck that killed her. In this way he was unable to change the past.
Many thanks, David. I like the sound of the SF movie. I have a great deal of sympathy for the idea that if time travel was ever possible, something would be in place to STOP the “kill your own grandfather” situation from ever happening. There would have to be some rules somewhere – otherwise history, far from being a constant thing, would always be in a state of flux.
I’d also have sympathy with the going to any universe other than your own scenario. I can see what Hawking is getting at but I would say it was still genuine time travel. You just cannot travel on your own timeline (a common topic in Doctor Who and rightly so too).