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Time and quality of life: what philosophy teaches managers

A philosophical and practical analysis of the importance of managing time as an essential resource, valuing quality of experience and passion over mere quantity of hours worked

by Luca Barni*

18 May 2026

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

There are circumstances and times that facilitate reflection. The 60th birthday is one of them: it forces you to reflect on what you have experienced, personally and professionally.

And the thought goes first of all to time, to be understood as a free and conscious choice of the use of one's time: the most recurring sentence on the subject is: '... I did not have time to do such and such a thing, I would have liked to but I did not have the time'. A statement that contrasts with Seneca's thought that we do not have little time, we waste a lot of it.

Pascal Chabot, a Belgian philosopher, has written a book on the subject that gets straight to the point in its first pages. He says: "This excuse is sometimes too easy. It may even seem in bad faith. After all, it is not time that decides that we cannot see a friend, it is rather the friendship that does not impose itself sufficiently, the person who does not make the choice to cultivate a relationship as a priority. We are free and time changes nothing'.

Another statement by the philosopher: 'Time is the most essential thing everyone has'.

The truth is that we have no perception of this essentiality. Is it because we have to share time with our network of relationships, our work and the society in which we live? Perhaps because we do not compute it, as if we were immortal highlanders?

Let us dwell on the first cause: time-sharing. Without mentioning burnout, which is a pathology, many managers complain about how overloaded their schedules are: professional and social obligations saturate them, sometimes even on weekends. The statement 'they saturate it' means that it is not time scheduled by the manager, ergo it is not time DEL manager. It is a feeling, not a pleasant one, that matures only with the passing of the years but for which the new generations have a different sensitivity than their fathers. This condition leads to a question: if the scheduling of the agenda is conditioned by others, perhaps what managers complain about refers to something else: the quality of time?

There is a characteristic, not very present in the managerial world, which however helps in the management of time quality, patience. Salvatore Natoli gives a beautiful definition of the patient: "... he is the one who, forced by nature or by men ... neither resigns nor rebels, nor is consumed in a sterile resentment, but gives himself time ... he who is patient, in the meantime of waiting, does not remain inert but matures possibilities, seeks alternative ways that impatience could never make emerge". The philosopher concludes his thought with a powerful statement: '... because it is not wise to close the game before it is over'. A behaviour that is not easy to keep, especially in critical situations where impatience prevails, preventing you from grasping the possibilities inherent in the contingency. It takes good professional maturity not to close the game before it is over.

Some time ago I met a professional cyclist who won two laps of Italia. Of the chats we had about his sporting and then managerial life, one statement stuck with me: 'The important thing for me was, and is, to go to bed pleasantly tired'. A plastic synthesis of the consequence of a satisfying job or, better still, of what the psychologist Mihàly Csìkszentmihàalyi has defined the flow state: that flow of consciousness so overwhelming and gratifying that you are totally immersed and concentrated in the activity. the reference to the sporting sphere does not imply that the flow state is exclusive to that sphere: it also belongs to the managerial world.

For all that has just been said, work, in some cases, is not work in the common sense of the term: it is not work when it is not time that conditions it but, rather, the contingent situation and, above all, the person's passion. As Chabot says 'it is when you look at the clock that the spell breaks': that is work in the common sense.

Before concluding, it is useful to return to Chabot's statement, 'time is the most essential thing everyone has'. This most essential element, the vast majority of people make it available in exchange for finances, or more prosaically, money (needless to use courtly ways of saying this).

Time for man is existential, money is material. For philosophy, this contract is unbalanced and the typical statement "... I have given forty years of my life to this company" is symptomatic of the importance of giving up one's time, existential, for a material good.

A simple wish: realise it before it is too late.

Not necessarily at the age of sixty.

Even at fifty would already be a good advance.

*Director Bcc Centropadana