There is the currency of cash and the currency of time and, increasingly, productive finance is an expression of productive time. In fact, in the frenzy of demands on time, especially in New York City, it pays to keep a personal “time account” and to be vigilant to hidden drains on time, especially the promotion of “do-it-yourself” innovations. Today’s preoccupation with low price/lost cost squeezes all “extra” from systems, but that tightness can cost valuable time for those who need to use the system.

Ironically, much lost time derives from the demise of “middle management” throughout the economy, leaving individuals to make up with their time that for which middle managers used to be responsible and which is now frequently missing from systems -quality control; continuity; and “stretch.” Middle managers provided checkpoints and recap and that bit of what engineers call “play,” so that the whole system had flexibility to deal with emergencies, quirky situations and imaginative new ideas.

Air travel epitomizes the problem. Take the demise of the travel agent, the knowledgeable person who did all the legwork now foisted upon the traveler or traveler’s staff and whose fee was paid by the travel industry, not the traveler. How can that transfer of task be productive for the traveler? Airfares are lower, but hours are spent playing the internet roulette wheel of airfares, time lost by whoever is charged with that task, of dubious ultimate net gain. Then there is self-service check in, even in first class. A thinly veiled excuse to lay off personnel, the self-service time sink serves only the company that made the machines. Waiting lines are not much shorter, and most self-service programs cannot handle the unusual, so a check-in that would have been done once, efficiently, by a check-in agent, now may be done twice or more by the passenger instead.

And, with respect to quality control – how can it be safer, post 9/11, to have created a system that would allow an evil-doer to book a flight, print out a boarding pass, and board a plane without ever having to utter a word or come face to face with an airline employee who might spot a plot through odd human behavior?

The laudable quest, of course, is to minimize waste. But, when systems are so glaringly bone-to-bone, the individual usually ends up having to invest time the system has refused to invest.

Time is the ultimate non-renewable and in fast-paced living, productive time should be the coin of the realm.