“专注的养成”:量化自我与时间的媒介化管理实践

“Stay Focused”: The Quantified Self and Mediated Time Management Practices

本研究从时间社会学的角度,考察时间管理APP如何在“疫情时间”背景下被用来应对弹性化的时间,以及使用者由此面临的时间管理困境,以回应量化自我中的“自主-失控”命题。研究发现,使用者试图通过时间管理APP来重构序时化时间与重建时间参照。但从历时性的动态视角来看,时间管理APP所设定的技术意识形态并不会被全盘接受,使用者能够通过功能“瘦身”、有限“断连”、数据“罢演”,甚至退出“序时化时间”来对量化自我技术加以驯化。然而,此种媒介化的时间管理实践仍然面临种种困境,只要结构性挑战仍然存在,个体面临的时间紧张就不是一个仅靠优化时间管理技术、加强自我重建就可以解决的问题。

This paper critically examines how college students in China manage time with timetracking apps in the background of the COVID-19 times through the perspective of the sociology of time, so as to provide insight into the dichotomy of autonomy and out-of-control in the quantified self. We argue that users tend to reconstruct serialized time and rebuild time reference through time-tracking apps. Nonetheless, the technological scripts set by apps are not fully accepted, and users can domesticate the apps through functional “thinning”, limited “disconnection”, data “strike” and even withdrawal from “sequential time”. However, such mediated time management practices still face structural dilemmas that individuals cannot solve by optimizing management techniques and enhancing self-restructuring.