When I was a kid, ATMs were known as Tyme Machines, the clever name of the Wisconsin company that serviced them. The cherry-red Tyme logo (Google it: It’s a 1970s, dawn-of-the-digital-age beauty) integrates the network’s slogan: Tyme Is Money. After I grew up and moved to the far-flung cities of Chicago and Minneapolis, I’d receive the oddest looks when asking for the nearest Tyme Machine.
As retailers large and small, digital and physical seek to corner the market on convenience, the idea that time is money has never been more palpable. It permeates every decision we make, and it even creates an ironic cycle of monetary input and output.
The more money we make, the more time we put in at the office; the more time a product or service promises us (alluring because we spend so much time at the office), the more we are likely to spend to get it.
The mother of two in a household with two working parents, I am the poster child for our convenience culture—particularly around the rise of consumer direct. Once a week, I receive a box of fresh ingredients and recipes so that I can feel creative and wholesome at dinnertime at least two-sevenths of the week. Another two to three of the week’s meals come from restaurants via a third-party delivery service.
A few times a year, I receive clothes in the mail—clothes that I don’t even pick out myself, but it’s better than schlepping to the store. Diapers come automatically every four weeks, and I can finish a book and buy a new one within moments on my Kindle.
The pinnacle of my digital prowess came via Amazon Prime Now: I once realized I forgot to pack something while waiting to board a plane in Minneapolis, so I ordered it via my phone and had it waiting for me at my destination in Chicago two hours later.
All those examples are digitally based (and, wow, make me sound like a shut-in), but the concept that time is money manifests itself in the brick-and-mortar world, too. Just as Amazon Go may be a groundbreaker for more affluent, urban markets, Wal-Mart Pickup With Fuel (p. 32) speaks to convenience seekers who are also welded to their cars. Both wed the digital to the physical, and prove that the future of retailing isn’t small or large, digital or physical—it’s all of the above. It’s whatever promises the customer time.
Slowing the Flow
There’s another side to this quest for time, the part that fuels our demand for convenience.
My daughter turned a year old Jan. 19. The next day, she took her first steps. We didn’t capture steps one, two or three for posterity, but we did manage to get steps four, five and six on video. I’ve watched it approximately 200 times now, and I spend half the time watching myself: In those six seconds of footage, I have a look of pure, unbridled joy. I am utterly in the moment.
What’s so mesmerizing about it is how foreign I look to myself—that I was able to stop the flood of information, media, tasks, problems and puzzles and just soak in that moment. I don’t see that look on my face all that often.
We all have these conversations: There’s not enough time in the day. We’re drinking from a fire hose. We don’t control our day—it controls us. I hear this from colleagues, industry members, friends and family. Heck, I hear it from my retired parents.
But the world isn’t going to change for us. It’s not going to get more relaxed, easier or softer. The work will never be “done.” We likely will never “catch up.” That used to induce panic deep inside me. Now, I find it gives me an unexpected peace and permission.
I’ll still continue to seek any form of consumer convenience. But I am also identifying ways to stop the cycle of buying more time only to fill it up with twice as many obligations and expectations.
So I got a subscription to the Sunday paper for the first time in my life. I visit a new coffee shop with my family once a week. I’m trying to take after my dad, who every morning wakes up, pours a cup of coffee, heads to his favorite chair and just sits. He just sits, people.
Remember, too, that we influence others with our quests to buy more time; we perpetuate this societal grind. So control what you can, but make those moments of pure, unbridled “now” more of the norm.
Abbie Westra is director of Winsight’s Retail Content Group. Reach her at awestra@winsightmedia.com.
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