Timeless : Poverty, Wealth, and the Social Life of Time

More time and freer days: that was the promise of the digital era. Instead many of us feel chronically off-balance – rushed, stretched thin, or left with too much of the wrong kind of time. This is not a personal failure, argues sociologist Boróka Bó, but rather a social condition. Time poverty is contagious, networked, shaped by shared rhythms, and transmitted through relationships.

Drawing on immersive fieldwork with new parents and recent retirees in Toronto’s wealthiest and poorest neighbourhoods, alongside large-scale time-use data, Bó shows how time is distributed throughout lives and how time imbalances emerge, spread, and become socially patterned across class, race, gender, and immigration status. She eschews productivity hacks, presenting instead an inclusive view that accounts for individuals’ discretionary time needs based on life circumstances. The result is the Goldilocks theory of time availability, a powerful lens for understanding how both too little and too much free time shape health and well-being.

Written with clarity and compassion, Timeless advances a new framework for temporal equilibrium and provides practical ways to create temporal sanctuaries: shared spaces in time for rest, recovery, and renewal.