The dimensions

Time & Space

Every action occurs at a moment and a place. The two dimensions that locate everything else — and the only ones the individual cannot step outside.

Orientation

Where and when

Time and space are the inescapable dimensions of action. The individual cannot act outside the present moment, and cannot act outside a place. Every layer of the hierarchy — thoughts, beliefs, goals, projects, tasks, actions — lives in both. Nothing escapes them.

They are treated as one orthogonal because they jointly answer the same question: where and when. Time has been the focus of the system so far, organising the calendar and the schedule; space is acknowledged but less developed, and will earn its own treatment as the system grows.

The two

Time

tempus · 'a portion, a season'

The unidirectional dimension along which action occurs. The present is the only moment in which the individual can act — an infinitesimal sliver dividing past from future. The past is fixed and accessible only through memory; the future is open, shaped by what is done now and reached only through prediction and planning. Memory and inference are how the present-acting individual spans time at all.

Shows up as

Schedule, calendar, deadlines, historical logs, recurrence, the timestamp on every recorded action.

Space

locus · 'a place'

The where of action. Every action occurs at a location — a chair, a room, a city, a continent. Space has often been minimised in productivity systems because work moved to the screen, equally placeable everywhere. Res does not assume that: the body is somewhere, and where it is constrains what one can do.

Shows up as

Less developed in the system today than time is — placeable on tasks and events when location matters, and likely to grow as the system does.