How to Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays

How to Spend Time

When I call the dentist to make an appointment and he tells me that he does not have an hour free at any time in the coming week, I believe him. He is a serious professional. But when someone invites me to a conference, or to a roundtable discussion, or asks me to edit a Festschrift, or write an essay, or join a panel of experts, and I say I haven't time, no one believes me. "Come now, Professor," he says, "a person like yourself can always make time." Obviously we humanists are not considered serious professionals we are idlers.

I've done some figuring. And I would urge my colleagues with similar occupations to make their own calculations and tell me if I am right. In a normal year (not a leap year) there are 8,760 hours. Reckon eight hours' sleep per night, one hour a day to get up, shave, and dress, add a half hour for undressing and setting the glass of water on the commode, and no more than two hours for meals, and we reach a total of 4,197.5 hours. Two hours for getting around the city adds another 730 hours annually.

Holding three classes a week, each lasting two hours, and setting aside one afternoon for advising students (100 hours), I spend at the university—in the twenty weeks into which I condense my teaching—220 hours, to which I add 24 hours of exams, 12 hours of examining theses, and 78 hours for faculty meetings and committees. On an average of five theses a year, each averaging 350 pages, each page to be read at least twice, before and after revisions, calculating three minutes per page, I come to 175 hours. For shorter papers, since my assistants deal with many of them, I assume only four for each of our six sessions, averaging thirty pages each: counting five minutes per page what with reading and preliminary discussion; add another 60 hours. Not including my own research, we reach 569 hours in all.

I edit a semiotics review, VS, which publishes three numbers yearly, a total of 300 pages. Not counting time spent reading and rejecting manuscripts, ten minutes per page (evaluation, revision, proofs) comes to 50 hours. I direct two series of scholarly volumes pertinent to my field. Six books a year totaling 1,800 pages; at ten minutes per page, we have another 300 hours. Translations of my own texts—essays, books, articles, papers read at conferences: considering only the languages I can check, I cover an annual average of 1,500 pages at twenty minutes per page (reading, checking against the original, and conferring with the translator, in person, by telephone, or by letter), and that makes 500 hours. Then there are my original writings. Even assuming I do not write a book, essays, papers, reports, notes for lectures, etc., easily amount to 300 pages. If we include time spent thinking, making notes, writing, and revising, at least one hour is spent on each page—another 300 hours. My weekly magazine column, at an optimistic estimate, what with choosing a subject, making notes, consulting a few books, then drafting it, cutting it to the required length, dictating it, and sending it off, takes three hours each week. Multiplying by fifty-two weeks gives 156 hours. (I am not calculating time spent on other, exceptional articles.) Finally, my mail, to which—still leaving much unanswered—I dedicate three mornings a week from nine to one, occupies 624 hours.

I calculate that last year, accepting only ten percent of the proposals received, and limiting myself to conferences closely associated with my discipline, at which I presented my own or my colleagues' research, and various unavoidable appearances (academic ceremonies, meetings required by the relevant ministries), I have totaled 372 hours of active presence (I do not count wasted time). Since many of these engagements were abroad, I calculate 323 hours of travel. This calculation considers that a Milan-Rome trip involves four hours, including taxi to the airport, waiting time, flight, taxi into Rome, settling in at the hotel, and arriving at the meeting place. A trip to New York consumes twelve hours.

It all adds up to 8,121.5 hours. Subtracting them from the 8,760 hours in a year, I am left with 638.5 hours, in other words about 1 hour 40 minutes per day, which I can devote to sex, conversation with friends and family, funerals, medical care, shopping, sport, theater. As you see, I have not calculated the time spent reading printed matter (books, articles, comics) not part of my work. Assuming I spent my travel time reading, in 323 hours, at five minutes per page (simple reading and annotations), I have had the possibility of reading 3,876 pages, corresponding to a mere 12.92 books of 300 pages each. And what about smoking? Sixty cigarettes a day, if each one requires half a minute (finding the pack, lighting up, putting it out), comes to more than 182 hours. Too many. I have to give up smoking.

1988