TIMENERGY: Why You Have No Time or Energy

by David J. McKerracher, Slavoj Žižek

Why are we so tired all the time? Why do our attempts to change habits and accomplish goals continuously fall apart? Why is everyone so anxious, stressed, and lonely? We normally don’t have any time, but when we finally do, we lack energy. On those rare occasions when we have energy outside of work, it is restless and difficult to harness towards meaningful goals. Starting from the realization that meaningful time is worthless without energy, the concept of “timenergy” points to something we all large energy-infused blocks of repeatable time throughout the week. Why You Have No Time or Energy is a critique of our job-centric society and the schooling system that assumes we are nothing more than workers, professionals, or managers. This book challenges all political representatives, professors, and media figures to think deeper about the daily lives and needs of working people.

ABOUT David McKerracher (M.A. in critical theory and B.A. in philosophy) is the sole founder and organizer of Theory Underground, an independent philosophy lecture course platform, publishing house, and social media APP. He is the author of Waypoint, and the co-editor of Underground Theory. Born in the city but raised on a homestead in the woods, McKerracher has always been an outsider looking in, trying to understand himself and the world. Loves cats, coffee, and timenergy!

Genres: Theory, Philosophy

205 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 23, 2024

Reviews

[Kaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diogenes would have been proud of this manifesto.

This small monograph on the wonderful portmanteau of ‘timenergy’ is only a brief introduction to what I hope will become a well established concept used by critically-minded workers, scholars, and thinkers in the coming years. McKerracher openly states that this book is something of a pamphlet on things to come, yet I was astounded by the breadth of material and criticism that he managed to accomplish in less than 200 pages.

After clearly establishing the importance of timeenergy (not just free time, but reliable and repeatable chunks of free time combined with structured - not frenetic - bouts of energy), McKerracher manages to attack intellectuals, anti-intellectuals, academics, educators, police, bosses, and the professional managerial class (PMC), in a seemingly singular fell swoop, all while maintaining a clear critical and theoretical stance and admitting his own flaws and failures.

It is not often we get to read this kind of incisive critique decoupled with the usual arrogance and false nobility of the leftist intellectual. Every time I felt the jouissance of being on the author’s ‘side’ against the unthinking praetorian guard of the corporate world, he reminded me that I am indulging just as much in unthinking value judgements about merit and intellectual success as they do - perhaps even more. Here lies the crucial argument about timenergy; practically everyone has been alienated from timenergy to some extent, but those who sit (it’s always sitting) philosophising about commodity fetishism, discipline societies and the petty bourgeois are some of the most privileged in terms of relative timenergy and forget that their ego-invested ideals perpetuate many of the social structures they like to dream about demolishing. His argument about progressive education is in particular instructive and I think almost unheard of in even the most critical leftist circles nowadays. His critique of identitarian rhetoric and the ‘identity workshop’ bogeyman came across to me as heavy-handed until I realised that this is exactly what he intended, and it is the extreme sensitivity of the modern liberal-leftist to identify, coupled with his/her/xer distaste towards the working ‘rabble’ (who doesn’t have the time(nergy) for the sort of Maoist self-criticism circles or Stalinist anti-racism show trials that the Diangelos of the world want to put them through, that McKerracher is fighting here.

This book certainly will benefit anyone who reads it. I’m afraid to say though, that the benefit, in many cases, will be the one that requires getting off the high horse of the Faculty and sitting down to listen to those of the Factory.

[Christopher Timmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Wokeness, traditional value, and everything else the gatekeepers and goal-post movers come up with to rationalize their 'deservingness' can be correct one day and wrong the next. These are Victorian Table Manners with fancy words and irrational logics instead of different kinds of spoons and forks. This is the moving around of seats on the Titanic as it sinks. The PMC of both sides is at base camp tweeting the signs of being the real deal climbers of mount improbable. Watch them do the Nietzsche at the dance party at the end of the world! So unique! So courageous! So excellent! Amore Fati!" pg.176

After finishing this book, I wanted to say here initially that David is a cool guy, but then I remembered from his book the section on coolness, and that at it's most crystallized reflects the ugliness of a control society, where the idea of a good education is to partake of years-long ceremonies at the castle known as "PMC". The best we can hope for as workers, the initiates say, is to be diligent managers of our own work. The mantra: Manage, or be managed. The insight: There is nothing higher than self-management. Learning in and of itself must yield to self-management.

When I look back at my small disciplinarian Christian school I went to for most of my childhood, and compare it to the public school I do IT work for now, I'm not sure which I'd rather choose today. At the Christian school, there was no arbitrary separation between grade levels -- there were still grade levels, but all twenty to thirty students of us interacted with each other. The only thing teachers excelled at there was Biblical education however -- a mixture of memorization, getting yelled at from the pulpit, and a lack of general education. A couple years ago, a senior at the public school I work for somehow remembered me from when I was at the Christian school, only to which he revealed after trying to haggle me out of paying for a broken Chromebook. We had some catharsis over the embarrassment and shame of going there. He still had to pay for the broken Chromebook.

My individualist, Nietzschean self says: "It was good that you went to that school. At least with trauma there's a hefty shock, unlike the control you'd get in the public school, a slow suffocation of microtraumas." But then my mom opens the door, a public school teacher for 37 years, and Nietzsche goes back to his corner, eating a bunch of fruit again.

I'm so glad David brought up Nietzsche, and Sloterdijk, towards the end. One of my biggest concerns, almost immediately, arose when he said "In a society organized around the exploitation of labor power, all we have outside of work is time-without-energy." WHAT ABOUT SPACE? This was in the back of my mind, and was letting me down because Dave is relatable (cool too, forgive me), as relatable as Rick Roderick or my favorite professor at uni. "Please bring up space!" I cried and shook the book.

No space.

But, that he did bring up Nietzsche, and specifically Sloterdijk, gives me hope that space may be interwoven with timenergy, someday. He says he has lots more pages of theory on timenergy, so I'm hopeful. I'm not into little Subjects or big Objects, or vice-versa, and reading through Sloterdijk's Spheres has only cemented this more.

I'm wondering if Dave has read any of Wilhelm Reich's stuff. Since timenergy doesn't exist inside individuals, but "structures society and relationships", I can't help but think of the orgone. And what do you do with orgone? Well, you capture it in a box, like yogis collect prana in some far-off cave.
This requires space. In our workstate, the function of energy is time. As energy approaches positive infinity for a constant of time A, say 1 hour, then that work is said to be good only if that limit continues approaching positive infinity for the next constant of time B, also 1 hour. A must equal B must equal C...in order for the work to be good. It is so good in it's constancy, all the rectangles smooth out into a curve over time, if you zoom out far enough...nevermind the hiccups in timenergy from rectangle to rectangle, shh,shh, ignore that. Look at this smooth curve, why, y practically equals x^2! Right or left, it makes no difference!

I don't know how how else to recommend this book. It was the first good explanation of jouissance I've come across, a good breakdown of desire vs drive.

There's a section of Rockefeller's General Education Board saying 'in our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands." Honest and creepy, just the way I like em.

Dave's a Heraclitan, not sure how many ceremony of opposites he'll have the timenergy for, but I appreciate him writing about this topic, coming up with a gang signal for it, and being a general unifier of worlds.

Here's to timenergy!

[Stefanos · Rating 4 out of 5]

In TIMENERGY, David McKerracher introduces the concept of timenergy to emphasize that time and energy are inseparable when it comes to living a meaningful life. If we want to cultivate deep relationships, develop skills, engage in creative projects, or build communities of care and mutual recognition, we need “routinely available large blocks of energy-infused time throughout the week”.

Time without energy is “garbage time”: bare life marked by exhaustion, burnout and nihilism.
Energy without time leads to restlessness; a surplus of potential with no space to be expressed.
And without repeatable, sustained blocks of timenergy, we’re unable to engage deeply—whether it’s learning a new skill (like drawing or playing an instrument), forming meaningful friendships, improving our fitness, or committing to any long-term pursuit one finds worthwhile.

However, under capitalism timenergy is systematically extracted. Our days are organized around waged labor that not only consumes more than a third of our time, but also often leaves us mentally and physically exhausted. For many, “free time” after work is mostly “garbage time”.

This framing helps explain a range of modern afflictions: chronic burnout, anhedonia, depressive hedonia, shallow relationships, political apathy, and a pervasive sense that a fulfilling life remains just out of reach.

This partially echoes Byung-Chul Han’s analysis in The Burnout Society, but as Žižek notes in the preface, McKerracher goes further. While Han focuses on the burnout of the achievement-subject (those who internalize neoliberal demands for constant productivity and self-optimization, particularly among knowledge workers and creatives) McKerracher also considers the toll of mechanical, repetitive labor as well as emotional labor in sectors like service, care work, healthcare, and education.

This analysis also echoes Marx’s theory of alienation which McKerracher somewhat strawmans; emphasizing alienation from the product and process of labor, but pays less attention to Marx’s focus on alienation from one’s own potential and from others.

McKerracher argues that many philosophers who have grappled seriously with the concept of time (Heidegger, Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Han, etc) have largely overlooked energy; probably because, having “timenergy privilege” they took energy for granted.

Importantly McKerracher frames timenergy as a collective good. We need timenergy for individual pursuits, like making art or learning new skills, but also to build communities of recognition: spaces where others with shared interests also have the timenergy to grow, create, and connect.
For example, learning to compose music can be rewarding on its own, but collaborating with other musicians, having an engaged audience, and being recognized by fellow composers or enthusiasts can make the experience far more fulfilling.
Similarly, collective timenergy is essential for collective action and democratic participation; staying informed, exchanging ideas, and taking part in shared decision-making all depend on it.

Historically, ruling classes have relied on the extraction of timenergy from the laboring masses to sustain their own freedom. The “free men of Athens” depended on the unpaid labor of women, children, and slaves. In Ancient Rome, the ideal of otium et bellum (leisure and war) rested on a system that exploited enslaved labor to secure freedom from economic necessity for the few. Or as Nietzsche criticised egalitarianism and socialism for stifling “exceptional individuals” in their pursuit of high art and culture.

Even if this held true in ancient Greece and Rome, or in Nietzsche’s time, it need not be the case today. Automation, AI, and robotics could be used to minimize the amount of socially necessary labor. Combined with a more equitable redistribution of the remaining necessary work, this would allow more timenergy for all. However, such a shift would require deep structural transformation, which is not possible within capitalism.

McKerracher critiques the modern Left for focusing on “fair pay” or “representation” instead of timenergy, yet he offers little in the way of concrete praxis or potential directions to bring about this change.
He does not meaningfully engage with recent technological developments or current movements advocating for shorter workweeks, universal basic services and income to decouple survival from labor, or worker-owned enterprises.
When he does briefly engage, he criticizes the “obsession” with horizontal structures (based on an anecdotal personal experience) and downplays the importance of democratic control over workplaces, claiming he would prefer a non-democratic workplace if it meant working fewer hours.
BUT! How could we move toward a world where work is dramatically reduced without asserting democratic power over how work is structured and distributed??? If workers owned the means of production, they could democratically choose to automate tasks and shorten working hours, freeing up timenergy without reliance on the State or the Party.

Furthermore, McKerracher argues that identity politics and intersectionality has been co-opted by corporations and the professional-managerial class (PMC) and that timenergy cannot be similarly appropriated.
First, he overlooks how intersectional analysis can be valuable in understanding how race, class, gender, and other social positions shape access to timenergy in the first place.
Moreover, I doubt that timenergy itself is immune to appropriation:
(1) It could easily be depoliticized and absorbed into neoliberal “wellness” culture as an individualized pursuit of self-help and self-care, detached from collective transformation.
(2) It could be used to reinforce existing inequalities: through gendered exploitation of domestic labor, nationalistic or colonial projects aimed at securing timenergy for some at the expense of others, etc.
(3) Many already enjoy plenty timenergy yet remain disengaged, pursuing apolitical or even reactionary goals. So while timenergy may be a necessary precondition for political and personal flourishing, it is far from sufficient. It must be accompanied by access to resources, relevant skills, and the capacity for sustained attention; something increasingly undermined by today’s attention economy.
McKerracher touches on these issues (for instance, he focuses a lot on the education system) but his claim that “unlike intersectionality; timenergy can’t be co-opted by the PMC” is shaky.

McKerracher wrote most of the book in a single day while still working at an Amazon warehouse; a fact that is impressive in its own right. He positions the book as neither popular nor academic philosophy, but rather as “underground theory” (a nod to his “Theory Underground” project). I understand and appreciate the desire to avoid rigid academic conventions and the gatekeeping often associated with theory. The book is accessible and passionate. That said, the book would benefit from editing and re-structuring, as it often repeats itself and jumps between topics. Moreover, the book ultimately leaves much to be desired in terms of depth and breadth but McKerracher acknowledges that this is only an introduction to the concept, and that a more thorough analysis of timenergy is in the making. On that front, Michael Downs, his “Theory Underground” partner, recently published Capital VS Timenergy: A Žižekian Critique of Nick Land which sounds interesting.

As a kind of manifesto that seeks to offer an existential basis for radical politics (one that is compatible with Marxism, anarchism, degrowth, feminism, and more) the book is valuable. If you have the timenergy, TIMENERGY is worth a read.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tremendous little volume, introducing ideas from the critical theory underground in an bold and extremely accessible manner that could earn it a place on any working American's bedside table.

The universal nature of its appeal, however, is undermined a bit by a few unfortunate digressions into reactionary culture war politics.

The book taken as a whole, though, is a hilarious warts-and-all, Bukowski-esque romp through modern working class philosophy, and remains highly recommended for that politically unflappable, theory-curious friend in your life.

[Till Sunfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think McKerracher has some interesting ideas, but they are merely sketched out here. In the book itself, he states, that he will be treating "Time", "Energy" and "Timenergy" in-depth in another book that is still a WIP. Bummer, because that's what I was expecting from this book (or at least a bit more than here, to make especially the rather vague term 'energy' more concrete). Relating and fusing these concepts to differentiate time in its quality and potentiality for self-actualization is interesting, but this book focuses in grand mostly just on the societal circumstances leeching from it, while there seems much more to be said about the concept "Timenergy" itself. I would've been interested in: Phenomenological descriptions of it, especially the moment of draining; the relation of it to the environment/urbanity/space; the social dimension of draining or enhancing it (in a face-to-face sense, and less in the macro-perspective mostly used in this piece); why does X become the target of 'Timenergy'; and as already mentioned, a more detailed indexation of the fused concepts. Especially for time, there is already a huge differentiation of possible subjective modes of experience (chronoception). Obviously, I don't expect a revised neuroscientific index from a philosopher, but why tinker completely disjointed from it, when there is a great springboard to be had? For "energy", I suppose one could also consider if it's not closely related to "Valence", which has some decent mappings in psychology.

Aside from this, perhaps some critique on the form and style:
While he explains that he doesn't want to delay the publication date just to conform to some formatting-norms so he doesn't get dismissed by academics, I believe at least one editor reading over it would've done some good. The Header of chapter 9 and 10 are overlapping, there are numerous typos scattered throughout the text, and the distances and empty spaces are a bit awkward, especially for the citations. Because of this and the following point, I was wondering if the book is a bundle/collection of his blog posts (which would be fine). His thoughts about the PMC or his workplace, repeated three or four times, also gave the impression that this was the case, because these repetitions seem to me to be a lot for a 170-page book.
For the style:
The oscillation between auto-biographical details and Theory was a bit off-putting to me, especially with the before mentioned repetition of him being an Amazon worker, being an outsider and so on and so on. At times, it felt a bit too much like a guy trying to sketch a very distinct picture of himself for reasons that (to me) didn't really connect to any of the discussed and marketed Theory. At last, the book is very much written in and for the context of the USA in its examples of discussed concepts and theories (on labor, politics, culture ...), which isn't meant to be a critique, but to be aware of, when reading this book.

Overall, I'm interested in what the more in-depth work of the title-giving concepts will look like. Always nice to see what the more fringe internet-side of Theory comes up with. Lots of potential and movement possible here.

[shev0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work makes me wonder why socialists are not thinking of human development anymore. That was, after all, the goal of historical socialists, to allow for everyone to develop their capacities to the fullest extent which otherwise gets squandered in this political-economic system. McKerracher poses that question with his theoretical tool of timenergy (something which all human activity presupposes but capitalism abstracts into labor power). While some points pop out in the overall narrative sometimes as distracted and unwarranted, I do embrace the book's imperfect 'undergroundness' (as the author states in the introduction). Timenergy has the chance to help us through many dead ends of leftist political theory and I am looking forward to the author's future book where he will develop it fully.

[Kent Winward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting concept in looking at capitalism's faults through the lens of timenergy. As an attorney your time is billed and becomes money, but your energy dictates how much time you can devote to making the money. The capitalist treadmill is real and energy sucking. I appreciate McKerracher's efforts to challenge a status quo that is not servicing anyone very well.

[Lukas Silski · Rating 5 out of 5]

The existential thesis which McKerracher poses is as important for theorizing today's situation as it is clarifying. After reading the book, one simply cannot stop viewing one's life without considering how timenergy theory adds into it.