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My childhood summers in Florida stretched wide and long through the eyes of a child. Each day felt like this endless wild adventure, where we ran across sunburnt grass and heard the sound of cicadas as we played. At any given moment, it still felt like we had so much time left in the day.
Somewhere along the way, that changed.
Today, my alarm goes off each morning at roughly the same time. I reach out in the half-lit room, turning off the punishing sound.
Then, I begin a routine that largely matches the day before, moving without much thought, brushing my teeth, going to work out, showering, and starting my work day. If I’m lucky, I’ll take a walk around the neighborhood to break things up. All before winding down with a familiar night routine.
And as I look at this sequence now, I shouldn’t feel so surprised the days just fly by, as if I have no say in the matter, with each birthday striking faster and faster.
But is there a way to slow life down? And make it feel like we have more in each day?
Looking deeper at the nature of time
French philosopher, Henri Bergson, described time as a uniquely personal experience, a subjective perception that cannot be unified so easily. An hour, is not simply sixty consecutive minutes, but a measurement of how the individual experiences those minutes. Moreover, it’s all relative.
For example, you have surely experienced the flow state, where you get intensely focused on a project, and hours fly by. Or, you’ve felt impatient on a long flight, feeling like each minute is slower than the next.
Albert Einstein described this in more practical terms, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”
The experiential nature cannot be ignored.
But why does time seem to speed up with age?
Another way to look at this is through Weber’s Law. It describes our ability to understand changes in stimuli as it relates to their magnitude.
For example, if you hold a 5 lb dumbbell in one hand and a 20 lb dumbbell in the other, it will be immediately obvious which is heavier.
But if you hold a 5 lb and 6 lb dumbbell, things get a bit murkier.
The longer you have lived, the harder it is to distinguish the passing of time. If you are only 10 years, one year constitutes 10% of the life you’ve already lived, so it feels like a much longer period.
Combine this with diminishing memory, and a sharp decline in the rich novelty we experience as kids, an increase in repetitive days, and it feels like time absolutely flies by.
I’ve realized that so many of the little things I do each day are precise duplicates of the day before: where I sit during breakfast, where I park my car at work or the gym, the greeting I give when seeing my spouse. Even the sequencing is the same! It creates this loop that folds in over and onto itself.
Now, before you get down on yourself because of this passing of time, know that there are good reasons for time moving quickly.
Researchers showed that when our dopamine levels are elevated, we tend to perceive time as moving much quicker, hence Einstein’s observation about our time with a pretty girl (or boy). Conversely, when dopamine levels are low, such as during that long boring flight, time crawls.
Moreover, before you curse yourself for letting time fly by — take a moment to appreciate if that speed was through enjoyment.
How do we slow time down?
As you may have guessed, novelty plays an important role in this perception of slowing things down.
And that is because your brain imprints much richer details from novel experiences, and your mind remembers them as much elaborate and expansive. For example, I just went to Switzerland with my spouse for a full week. It’s incredible how much longer that week felt to my normal week.
We saw super unique things, like these men surfing in the mountain stream in Thun:
They used the rope on the left to glide them into the middle where the perma-wave was going.
How could we forget experiences like this?
The trip for us required stepping out of our comfort zone. We slept in new places, sometimes without air conditioning. We had to learn their public transportation, and how to overcome a few language barriers. Yet as a whole, it was a truly awesome experience that truly enriched us and stretched out time.
One strategy is to find deeper meaning in these experiences. A study led by Dr. James L. McGaugh of UC Irvine, found that lasting memories tend to come from those which are emotionally evocative. After all, it would be a waste of your mind’s databank to encode every detail of a mundane morning commute.
Unfortunately, the encoding of these emotionally aroused experiences often come from negative sources. These typically weren’t intentional moments.
If you are intentional about deeply impactful positive experiences, you position yourself to improve your life’s narrative with more lasting moments you can enjoy. Just realize that this often involves overcoming a few challenges.
For example, one of the most impactful experiences I’ve had was visiting Mayan pyramids in Belize. Getting to them was arduous, involving a trek through the jungles, bickering with my then-girlfriend, being bit by bugs.
But arriving at those pyramids, and experiences the true awe of this moment made the entire experience worth it. I felt like I’d arrived at the birthplace of civilization. The stories of survival against all odds, surviving droughts, famines, warfare, and natural disaster, made me realize all the difficulty was well worth it.
Me posing on one of the pyramids. This doesn’t nearly capture the scale of the building.
A quick and easy strategy for expanding your time
An emerging topic of research is focused on proactive savoring.
With proactive savoring, you deliberately and strategically choose experiences you want to fully embrace, and take in to their fullest.
The key part of this strategy means staying in the present moment, and not concerning yourself with what happens an hour, day, or week from now. Notice the smaller details. Appreciate eccentricities in people. Observe cultural differences and contrast them with what you are used to. Strike up conversations with a new person and learn about them. Try something you never thought you’d try before or that which might feel weird.
This can also mean breaking from your usual routine. Even something as simple as sitting or parking in a different spot each day can help spark more appetite for novelty. Try watching something entirely different on television when you are lounging.
The big idea here is to manage your time differently, and be wary of living in a loop. What I hate about getting caught in this loop is that you can begin to assume you have infinite time to play with.
I certainly fear that I’ll wake up some day in my 70s, and feel like I’ve just blinked from when I was a small child. I’ll wonder how time passed me by so quickly and that I left so much on the table. That prospect genuinely scares me, and motivates me to keep doing things differently. I hope it does for you too.
Beware of autopilot. Make it a goal to attain denser memories. Know that it means shedding a bit of that comfort. Mix things up each week and try to savor the little things. If you do that, you’ll really feel like you’re living.
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