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For more than a decade, I have spent a significant portion of every summer living outside the United States. These temporary relocations prompt me to reassess practices that I had long taken for granted\u2014from workplace norms to social policy, parenting to holiday traditions.<\/p>\n
My most recent cross-cultural preoccupation has been with time<\/strong>: How do we experience time individually and collectively?<\/p>\n This might seem like a purely philosophical question, but our ability to organize and control time has a lasting impact on how we create community, develop a shared mission, and ultimately how we work together toward common goals.<\/p>\n A collective sense of time is necessary to sustaining the work any mission-driven organization,<\/strong> from schools and universities to policy bodies, grassroots community groups, nonprofits, and NGOs. In an age in which we take for granted remote work and asynchronous organizing through Slack and Signal, we ignore the power of shared time at our peril.<\/p>\n I have long observed that Germany and Italy have communal rhythms and routines<\/strong> that bring people together, often in a casual and unplanned manner. In virtually every Italian town and village I\u2019ve visited, for example, the evening passeggiata <\/em>brings people of all generations to the town square or main street to stroll, socialize, and enjoy a gelato or drink.<\/p>\n When I worked in Germany, workplace norms dictated that we ate lunch together every day. (It helped to have an onsite cafeteria). The six-week summer holiday is the same within each federal state (and staggered across the country): if you are on vacation, odds are that your friends, neighbors, and caf\u00e9 owner are as well.<\/p>\n These shared rhythms make it easier to socialize, collaborate, and participate in civic life. Even though I worked roughly the same number of hours in Germany and the United States, I spent more time with friends and colleagues when I lived in Berlin.<\/p>\n By contrast, my American life is a Tetris-like puzzle of appointments and commitments. That Tetris matrix is mine alone, and each one of my friends, colleagues, and collaborators has their own matrix to manage.<\/p>\nFrom the passeggiata <\/em>and the Mittagspause <\/em>to personal Tetris<\/strong><\/h4>\n
The loneliness of the digital nomad<\/strong><\/h4>\n