“There is a great and yet quite ordinary secret.
All people share in it, everyone knows it, but very few ever think about it.
Most simply take it for granted and are not in the least surprised by it.
This secret is time.There are calendars and clocks to measure it, but that means very little – for everyone knows that a single hour can seem like an eternity, yet sometimes it passes in a moment – depending on what one experiences in that hour.
For time is life.
And life resides in the heart.”
These words appear near the beginning of Momo (more or less; I read the German version). It would make for a killer Instagram post, the type you press “like” on to signal you “feel that,” then scroll to the next post for your next dopamine hit.
So what’s the book about?
Momo is a beautiful story about a little girl who suddenly appears in the poor part of a town. She has a unique and powerful gift: she listens…really listens. Naturally, the people love her, take care of her, and generally love spending time around her. Then come the “grey men” from the “Time Bank.” They have a single goal: to convince people to save time. They whisper that if you stop wasting it and focus on what matters, you’ll have everything you always wanted.
And the people listen. They work harder, more efficiently, and often make more money. Which is great, so they buy better things like expensive automatic toys for their kids. Everyone is doing their best to save time.
Of course, that is not the end of it, but this is where I stop talking about the plot.
Instead, I want to talk about something strange: how this book somehow broke time itself. Because Momo isn’t a modern critique of hustle culture, it was written in 1976. It’s like it predicted us. It’s not just timeless; it’s about time, and how we keep losing it.
The grey men have Wi-Fi now.
So first, I want to try and figure out: who are the grey men? In the book, they are beings that look like normal humans, but they feed on other people’s time.
So the obvious answer might be, the modern-day grey men (and women, of course) are the influencers and celebrities. After all, they feed their self-worth on our attention. At the same time, they also make a killing trading their audience’s time for money – selling us a new miracle gadget, an overpriced supplement, or their own brands that slap their names on cheap products made in some factory somewhere.
But the more I think about it, many of them are trapped in the same system we all are. And the more attention they sell, the more the grey men reward them with money, visibility, validation. Some influencers start believing it’s the only way to matter. So they post more, promote more, and feed the machine that feeds on them.
But if it’s not them – who else?
Maybe it’s the wave of tech and lifestyle companies. Tech companies run platforms that turned our time into currency. They took what used to be free, our curiosity, our boredom, our conversations, and monetised it. Every scroll, every pause, every flick of our thumb is tracked, predicted, optimised. Not for our own good, but for “engagement.” Our time is turned into money by placing advertisements in front of our eyes, mostly for scam products or lifestyle products that promise us to…save time. Don’t waste time cooking – order. Get this amazing tool, it will make you 100% more productive. Give us money and save some time and effort.
All of them, the influencers, tech CEOs, and advertisers, to a degree are grey men: they are living off other people’s time. And they all probably started like we do, wanting to make something out of their time. Now they steal time because that’s the only thing they understand. And the system keeps rewarding them for it.
The cost of stolen time
What are we getting for giving away our time like this? This part is going to sound worse than it actually is for most people, but bear with me.
The grey men whisper that time isn’t something to experience – it’s something to use. That every minute not spent improving, learning, optimising, or creating is wasted. So we fill the little gaps. Podcasts while walking. Audiobooks while cooking. Emails while eating. Productivity tools to help us squeeze even more into a day that already feels too full.
We call it efficiency, but it mostly means never being done with anything – and always feeling short on time.
And when we finally stop being productive and just want to rest… what do we do? We scroll. For two hours. Our brains tired, our eyes buzzing, and we can’t remember a single thing we just saw. That is literally our memories, our time, being stolen.
It’s a strange kind of tiredness, too. Not the kind you get from working hard, but the kind that comes from doing nothing that matters. You go to bed overstimulated and somehow underfed, and in the worst case, guilty for not being productive enough.
When time gets stolen often enough, even silence starts to feel wrong. You reach for your phone at every red light, every pause in a conversation. Because stopping feels like failure, and resting feels like wasting.
How they get you
The grey men of today work exactly the same way they do in Momo.
They come for you in your moments of insecurity. Then they amplify it.
They use your fear of not being enough, not being seen, not being successful. They know exactly when you’re vulnerable, when you’re tired, lonely, or scared about the state of the world (seriously, Meta once gave advertisers in Australia the option to target depressed teens), and then they appear with a fix: a new course, a new product, a new distraction.
Your insecurity about money? You are not working hard enough; here’s a course on the current trendy side hustle.
Your insecurity about your looks? Here’s a “miracle” super-cream.
Your anxiety about the world? Look at this cat meme.
That’s how the grey men win. They make you believe your discomfort is a bug that needs fixing.
The lost art of being bad at art
While cat memes truly are the pinnacle of human civilisation, having our time stolen like this comes at a cost. We lose patience because time always seems to be scarce. We stop enjoying everyday things like the taste of our morning coffee, a walk with no podcast, or doing things just for the sake of doing them.
Starting my blog felt scary for that exact reason: I’m not a great writer. I didn’t want to “waste” people’s time with my attempts at writing. My time would probably be “better spent” taking on another marketing client. But then again, doing this is fun. Simple as that.
That’s what time in the current version of the internet is stealing from us: the courage to do things badly, just for the joy of doing them.
It’s telling us:
- Choose your hobbies based on potential for extra income.
- Experiences have to be polished to curate a personal brand.
- Friendships should be viewed in terms of what you can gain by them.
The slower, softer parts of life get labeled “unproductive.”
And that pressure kills curiosity, play, and creativity – the exact things that make life worth living.
The cure is not an app (sorry)
But there’s a cure – or at least something that helps. And it’s simple: listening. So corny, I know. I cringe just writing this.
Not in the “mindfulness app” way that tracks your mindful minutes with an animated progress bar.
Like sitting down with your favorite album and just listening to it. Not as background noise while you’re doing the dishes or scrolling. Just you and the music that someone spent months, or even years, making. Listening can also mean seeing the world. The real one. The one with wind and trees and birds and weird city sounds.
That’s what I mean by listening: paying attention to things that don’t shout for it. Things you choose to listen to.
And it’s not always comfortable. Silence can feel awkward. Boredom can feel wrong. But being bored, the good kind, is where ideas start. It’s where you notice what actually feels good to do.
Sometimes fear, anger, or sadness knock on the door, and that’s when the grey men strike hardest – when we’re most vulnerable. They whisper: “Distract yourself. Scroll. Buy this.”
Being offline, a little more
If there’s one way not to become a grey man yourself, it’s this: spend more time offline.
That doesn’t mean running away to a cabin in the woods (although that’s very tempting). It just means being more present in the actual world, not the one the grey men are trying to make you believe you live in. Because the real world – the one outside your feed – is still full of amazing people, weird little moments, and things that make you laugh for no reason.
Being online is fine, too, but be more selective. Surround yourself with media that leaves you lighter, not emptier. Choose creators and stories that make you curious, not anxious. Treat your media consumption like you treat your diet – you wouldn’t feel great if your diet only consisted of McDonald’s and ice cream, would you?
How to actually do that is a bigger conversation for another time – but even setting that intention is a start.
Listening, in the end, just means paying attention to what’s real.
If you’re still scrolling, read Momo
If you’re the type stuck in endless doomscrolls, or if your bookshelf is full of self-development and productivity books, read Momo next.
It does a far better job than I ever could at reminding you what all this time was supposed to be for in the first place. It’s written in a light, playful way that makes it the perfect read to escape the doom for a while – and still leaves you thinking about the things that actually matter.
Because time is life.
And life, as Ende wrote, resides in the heart – not on your calendar.
