3.a 精确感知时间

Make Time Your Friend 3.a: Perceiving Time Precisely

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-18 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113110927/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/427.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

Only after becoming friends with time do you truly know how precious it is, and how magical. When I didn't know, I didn't even know that I had long since turned it into my enemy. I struggled for many years, still thinking I was fighting with this world. Then one day I suddenly discovered that I was just like that knight from Cervantes's pen, Don Quixote. Don Quixote had an identity with a label on it—"knight"—and so he had, and held fast to, the "chivalry" that ought to fit that identity of his. Windmills were what he fought against, yet he could never know that his enemies were actually that invisible "wind," and also "his brain," which originally ought to have belonged to him, yet was surprisingly completely beyond his control and had instead become his master.

Like everyone, I thought myself extraordinary from childhood, and of course I too stuck all kinds of labels on myself: I revered fairness, yearned for freedom, longed for equality, and looked forward with hope. For quite a long time, I was like most people, but what I saw was unfairness, what I felt was shackles, what I experienced was inequality, and what slowly vanished without a trace was hope. Now I would guess that everyone inevitably has to go through such a stage; it's just that only a few people are able to get through it. Once, in a class of several hundred people, I said, "Many people have, involuntarily, had thoughts of suicide. Those of you who have ever had a thought of suicide, even if only for an instant, please honestly raise your hands."—almost no one didn't raise a hand. Then I said, "Believe me, you are not alone."

The instant that day when I discovered that I was, of all things, merely another Don Quixote, the feeling was truly especially eerie: at the same moment as all hope turned to ashes, I could, surprisingly, experience being reborn in raging fire. [Translator's note: the original writes 万念惧灰 ("all thoughts fear ashes"), a slip for 万念俱灰, "all hope turned to ashes"; translated by the intended sense] Perceptions that come directly from the senses are easy to share with others, but experiences in thought are often hard to express in language and writing, which are flawed to begin with. But I think many people must have had the same experience as me.

Rebirth doesn't mean being transformed in the blink of an eye. An infant that, of all things, has adult consciousness has more joy and also relatively greater and more pain. At that time I didn't yet know that I would, surprisingly, have the chance to be friends with time; I only understood dimly that I could no longer waste time. Of course, now I no longer believe I have the ability to waste time, just as I, as a human being, have no real ability to manage time. [Translator's note: the original writes 我不在认为 ("I am not at believing"), a slip for 我不再认为, "I no longer believe"; translated by the intended sense] At most, I can betray time by running away from some responsibilities—but how sinful a thing is that? A friend, after reading Milan Kundera's novel *The Unbearable Lightness of Being*, summed it up by saying that running away from responsibility brings lightness, but that is precisely "the unbearable lightness of being"!

No one fails to understand their own friends. So-called "true friends" are necessarily, and can only be, the few people who are ultimately proven to be those we truly understand. By the same reasoning, if we are, surprisingly, given the chance to be friends with time, and do indeed have the wish to be friends with time, what reason is there not to patiently understand every aspect of time?

Everyone has their own luck. So do I. One piece of my good luck was that one day almost five years ago, while idly browsing online, I surprisingly came across a book called *[This Strange Life](http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=7435930)* (《奇特的一生》)[[1](#footnote_0_427 "Search Google for this book's title now and you can immediately find a complete downloadable e-book version.")] , by Granin, first published in 1974. This work, defined as a documentary novel based on real people and real events, tells how a Soviet entomologist, Alexander Alexandrovich Lyubishchev[[2](#footnote_1_427 "Alexander Alexandrovich Lyubishchev, 1890 – 1972. This website has an English introduction to him and some photos.")] , achieved astonishing accomplishments over his lifetime through the so-called "time statistics method" he invented.

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author from Granin's *This Strange Life* (Chinese translation); not Li Xiaolai's own words.] No one, including those close to Alexander Alexandrovich Lyubishchev, imagined how large the legacy he left behind would be.
>
> In his lifetime he published some seventy academic works. Among them are classic works on analysis of variance, biological taxonomy and entomology; these works have been widely translated and published abroad. Of papers and monographs of every kind he wrote more than five hundred printer's sheets in all. Five hundred printer's sheets equals twelve thousand five hundred typewritten pages. Even by the standard of a professional writer, this is a huge number.
> In the history of science, Euler, Gauss, Helmholtz and Mendeleev all left enormous legacies. I have always been baffled by such prolificacy. It is hard to explain, yet also quite natural—in ancient times, people wrote rather more. As for today's scholars, multivolume complete works are a rare and even strange phenomenon. Even writers seem to write less than in the past.
>
> Lyubishchev's legacy consists of several parts: there are works on the taxonomy of flea beetles, the history of science, agriculture, genetics, plant protection, philosophy, entomology, zoology, the theory of evolution, and atheism. In addition, he also wrote memoirs, recalling many scientists and talking about every stage of his life and about Perm University……
>
> He lectured, served as head of a university department and as the person in charge of a section of a research institute, and also often went on field trips everywhere; in the thirties he traveled all over European Russia, visited many collective farms, and studied fruit-tree pests, corn pests and ground squirrels on the spot…… In his so-called spare time, as "rest," he studied the taxonomy of flea beetles. This item alone was a considerable workload: by 1955, Lyubishchev had collected thirty-five boxes of flea beetle specimens. [Translator's note: the Chinese text writes 三十五篇 ("thirty-five pieces/articles"); 篇 is likely a slip for 箱, "boxes"; translated by the likely intended sense] Thirteen thousand beetles in all. Of these, five thousand male flea beetles had their organs sectioned. Three hundred species in total. All these beetles had to be identified, measured, sectioned and made into specimens. The material he collected was five times more than that of the Zoological Institute. He studied the taxonomy of the genus of flea beetles all his life. This requires a special talent for deep, painstaking study, and a profound understanding of this kind of work, an understanding of its value and of its inexhaustible novelty. When someone asked the famous histologist Niefomeiwaji how he could spend his whole life studying the structure of worms, he was very surprised: "The worm is so long, and life is so short!" [Translator's note: the histologist's name is romanized from the Chinese 聂佛梅瓦基; the original Russian spelling is not given]

This is a very thin booklet, so I finished reading it in less than an hour. After closing the book, all I could do was sigh deeply. For an ordinary person like me, the level of such a master is precisely what's called out of reach: the more you look up at it the higher it seems, the more you gaze at it the harder it seems, and even boring into it you cannot attain it. Knowing is easy; doing is hard.

Many years ago, around the age of 20, I forget because of which book of Li Ao's I had read, I felt that his way of keeping a diary made quite a bit of sense, so I began learning to keep a daily "event record" (even log). [Translator's note: the original writes "even log," a slip for "event log"; kept as written] Apart from the events I myself went through, I recorded nothing at all; I tried not to record thoughts, not to record feelings, and to record only the events themselves. For example,

> **December 20, 1995, Yanji**
> 1. Hosted the distributors' conference
> 2. Received last month's bonus, ××××× yuan in total.
> 3. Li Kun treated me to a meal; by my count we hadn't seen each other for four months.
> ……
>
> **May 10, 1996, Jilin City**
> 0. For a whole week in a row, did no proper work at all, just read a number of boring novels.

To this day I still keep this habit, and have benefited endlessly from it. In fact, it takes only about 10 minutes a day. Later, to save even more time, I simply threaded a string through this notebook and hung it on the wall facing the toilet in the bathroom at home; every night before going to bed, sitting on the toilet, I would just write it up while I was at it. Such a simple log has enormous benefits. At the end of every year, I know what I did over the past year; this alone is extremely valuable. Only after turning 30 did I feel that the truly meaningful things I was doing had slowly increased. For example, here are some event records about the second book I published, gathered together:

> **September 12, 2004, Beijing**
> 1. Handed the final manuscript of *TOEFL 6-Point Essays* (《Toefl 6分作文》) to my editor in charge, Dou Zhongchuan.
> ……
>
> **November 9, 2005, Chengdu**
> 1. Received an express delivery from Dou Zhongchuan; helped revise *TOEFL 6-Point Essays* according to the third-review comments
> ……
>
> **January 27, 2006, Beijing**
> 1. Received an express delivery from Xu Yanqing: *TOEFL 6-Point Essays*, twenty copies.
> ……
>
> **May 29, 2006, Beijing**
> 1. Submitted the revised manuscript of the second edition of the TOEFL essay book, renamed *TOEFL iBT High-Scoring Essays* (《TOEFL iBT高分作文》)
> ……
>
> **August 3, 2006, Beijing**
> 1. Received an express delivery from Xu Yanqing: *TOEFL iBT High-Scoring Essays*, second edition, ten copies.
>
> ……
>
> **October 16, 2007, Beijing**
> 1. Received an express delivery from Ma Ning: *TOEFL iBT High-Scoring Essays*, third edition, seventh printing, ten copies.
> ……

But I, who had such a habit, after reading *This Strange Life*, was merely startled by Lyubishchev's level of mastery. Nearly two years later, when I read it again, I was surprised to discover: "What? I was so stupid; I should have understood long ago!"

Lyubishchev's log was an "event-time log" (event-time log). His method was more advanced than Li Ao's. Li Ao's event record could usually record only the name of the event; it is a results-based record. Lyubishchev's "event-time log," however, is a process-based record. The subtle difference here is that a process-based record can only be more detailed than a results-based record.

The following is a sample of Lyubishchev's log, excerpted from *This Strange Life*:

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author from Granin's *This Strange Life* (Chinese translation); not Li Xiaolai's own words.] **Ulyanovsk. April 7, 1964.**
> Systematic entomology (drew two pictures of an unnamed bagworm moth)—three hours fifteen minutes.
> Identifying bagworm moths—twenty minutes.
> Additional work: wrote a letter to Slava—two hours forty-five minutes.
> Social work: plant protection group meeting—two hours twenty-five minutes.
> Rest: wrote a letter to Igor—ten minutes;
> *Ulyanovskaya Pravda*—ten minutes;
> Leo Tolstoy's *Sevastopol Sketches*—one hour twenty-five minutes.
>
> **Ulyanovsk. April 8, 1964.**
> Systematic entomology: identifying bagworm moths, finished—two hours twenty minutes.
> Began writing the report on bagworm moths—one hour five minutes.
> Additional work: wrote letters to Davidova and Bryakher, six pages—three hours twenty minutes.
> Travel there and back—thirty minutes.
> Rest—shaving. *Ulyanovskaya Pravda*—fifteen minutes.
> *Izvestia*—ten minutes.
> *Literaturnaya Gazeta*—twenty minutes.
> A. Tolstoy's *The Vampire*, sixty-six pages—one hour thirty minutes.

A process-based record is not only more detailed, it has another huge benefit—when the result turns out badly, it's easier to find the cause. After figuring out the difference between the two kinds of record, "process-based" and "results-based," I began trying to add the time after each event I recorded.

In less than about two weeks, I immediately experienced another huge benefit of this new recording method: it makes your sense of time more and more precise. Earlier we talked about the feeling everyone has that "time goes faster and faster," and why everyone has this feeling. And this feeling makes us develop a lot of unnecessary anxiety. Anxiety itself is of no help whatsoever; it can only have negative effects. My experience is that this kind of process-based "event-time log" record can adjust my sense of time, so that when estimating any workload, it's easier to settle on "truly realistic, feasible goals." And precisely because of this I can basically always achieve my goals, and so I can basically be counted as having "defeated anxiety."

Only when I was reading *This Strange Life* for the third time did I really notice this passage:

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author from Granin's *This Strange Life* (Chinese translation); not Li Xiaolai's own words.] Lyubishchev must have developed a special sense of time. The biological clock ticking away deep in our organisms had become, in him, an organ of both sensation and perception. My grounds for this inference are: I met him twice, and both are recorded in his diary, the time noted very precisely—"one hour thirty-five minutes," "one hour fifty minutes"; yet at the time he naturally did not look at his watch. I walked with him, unhurried, keeping him company; by means of a kind of inner attention, he could feel the hour hand moving across the face of the watch—for him, the rushing current of time was something he could see and touch; he seemed to be immersed in this current and could feel the light flowing away coldly.

People like Lyubishchev are the true friends of time. They understand time, and through long, deliberate training they can feel every action of time even without a watch—of course, time has only one action: flowing away, minding its own business.

This is why I wrote this passage in the *Preface*:

> I have a friend called time. She and I can truly be called childhood sweethearts; she silently kept me company for more than twenty years before I began truly to know her. She originally had no face, but because I am always taking her picture with words, she can therefore often be by my side. Time is by nature heartless, yet I can treat her as a friend, because she once made me understand, and later has kept proving often, that whatever I do, as long as I give patience, she will keep me company and even help me wait for the result, and always delivers it to me faithfully; she has never let me down. It is precisely because I have time as a friend that I have a chance to be liberated merely by using my mind.

Since "managing time" is impossible, the solution can only be to try every means to truly understand yourself, truly understand time and perceive time precisely; and then to try every means to bring yourself and your actions "in step" with time—which is what I call "making friends with time."

---

Footnotes:

1. Now [search Google for this book's title](http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=%E5%A5%87%E7%89%B9%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%80%E7%94%9F&btnG=Google%20%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&lr=&sourceid=Mozilla-search), and you can immediately find a complete downloadable e-book version. [[↩](#identifier_0_427)]
2. Alexander Alexandrovich Lyubishchev, 1890 – 1972. [This website](http://www.zin.ru/animalia/coleoptera/eng/lyubishc.htm) has an English introduction to him and some photos. [[↩](#identifier_1_427)]

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