Takashi Saitō on the Power of Time Alone

The title The Power of Time Alone caught me immediately. Before the pandemic, there was a powerful sense that being on your own meant missing something. We even had a name for the anxiety: FOMO, or fear of missing out.

COVID-19 changed how many of us spent our days. It made knowing what to do with time alone feel like a skill worth having.

Takashi Saitō’s The Power of Time Alone

I knew little about the Japanese author beyond what I read in the book. I chose it largely on the strength of its title.

The book keeps returning to one question: how do you make the time you spend alone an opportunity to learn or grow?

Saitō says that an isolated period of roughly ten years, which he describes as a dark time, helped make him the person and professor he later became.

Loneliness and Solitude

In Korean, godok can suggest both the state of being alone and the loneliness that can accompany it. In English, solitude can carry a more welcome sense of time alone, while loneliness names the feeling of being cut off.

The distinction helps explain the book’s point. Time on your own can be something you learn to use.

Growing in the Time You Spend Alone

I have had a different life from Saitō, but a lot of the book felt familiar.

Having some time to yourself can be part of growing, and using that time well takes practice.

If I meet someone just because I cannot bear an empty hour, the time can go by without much to show for it. Alone, I can work on something I have neglected or spend the hour doing something I have been wanting to do.

What My Own Time Alone Made Possible

I would be a different person without the time I spent on my own. I have no great achievement to point to, but I learned to have more of a say in what I do with my time. I still waste some of it.

I read more books and kept writing on my blog. Over time, the writing led to opportunities I would not have had otherwise.

I kept up my language study until English was no longer something I worried about. I also learned the basics of Japanese, Chinese and Spanish. Japanese is the only one of those three I kept practicing consistently. I cannot claim to use the other two with confidence, but they are more familiar than they once were.

Everyone Has Time They Spend Alone

We live among other people, yet sooner or later everyone has time they have to spend on their own.

It seems worth learning how to use that time before it arrives.

Book Information

The Power of Time Alone

Author

Takashi Saitō

Korean edition publication date

1 January 2023

ISBN13

9788960868434

View book on YES24

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