Use

Command has been given; use is the will putting the powers to work and keeping them there. Aquinas calls it active use to distinguish the will’s applying from the faculties’ being applied.

The stage matters most in its duration. Beginning a task and finishing one are different achievements, and the difference is almost entirely here — in the will’s continued application to something that has stopped being novel. Most work fails not at the decision and not at the first minute but in the fortieth, when the initial motion has spent itself and nothing but use is holding the thing together.

This is also where the will’s application becomes visible from outside: use is the stage that consumes clock time. Everything before it happens in an instant of interior motion. Use is what an afternoon is made of.

In Actus Humani

Use is the stage the timer measures. Starting a timer on an act is an act of use made countable; the minutes that accumulate against an estimate are use being honest about itself. It is the one stage in the sequence the app can see directly.