What if time wasn’t neutral? What if urgency was a trap? What if the clock, like so many systems, was never made with us in mind?

We step outside grind culture to ask how time works, and who it works for. From production schedules to academic timelines, we explore how time shapes us, pressures us, and polices us as we navigate systems that demand constant productivity - and often without care or a proper sense of our contexts.

Aiwan reflects on her journey as a filmmaker in extractive production environments, where tight turnarounds and top-down decisions often override wellbeing, due process, or nuance. She unpacks how creative work gets distorted by commercial timelines and what’s lost when deadlines take precedence over depth.

Tamanda shares how time functioned in her PhD - from the long haul of writing up to the pressure to always be producing. She speaks to the challenge of holding grief, illness, and care within systems that measure value by speed and visibility - and the toll of navigating slow processes inside fast institutions.

Together, we unpack the tension between polychronic time (cyclical, relational, fluid) and monochronic time (linear, rigid, task-driven), drawing on our experiences across entertainment, media, and research; between the continent and the diaspora, and from childhood to our current stage. We ask what it means to reclaim time - not just for rest, but for dignity, self-determination, and different ways of knowing.

This is an episode about pace, labour, and the politics of production- but also about boundaries, burnout, and what it means to move on our own terms.

In this episode:

• The systems that shape how time is managed, valued, and weaponised
• Production deadlines, extractive creative cycles, and burnout in media work
• Academic timelines, productivity pressures, and the myth of constant progress
• Polychronic vs. monochronic time - and why linearity doesn’t work for everyone
• How race, queerness, grief, and caring responsibilities disrupt dominant time norms
• The tension between institutional pace and lived experience
• What it means to reclaim time for rest, ritual, and deeper ways of working

Please leave a rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes.

Connect with us on:

• Substack
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• AiAi Studios
• Roots & Rigour

This is an AiAi Studios Production

©AiAi Studios 2025

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.