The Power of Time Perception

by Jean Paul Zogby

  “A varied, diverse, and fulfilled life is also a long one”

  As we age, we become accustomed to our familiar environments. So visiting new places can offer ample new experiences and memories for the brain to process. You do not have to travel far to explore novelty. This can be just around the corner, perhaps a new restaurant or coffee shop that you have never tried before. New sounds, people, tastes, colors, textures, and smells send lots of new information to your brain and provide lasting memories which, when recalled, will cause time to stretch. Essentially, constantly seek out new experiences in order to slow down the speed at which life is running.

  “The answer to perceived longevity lies in our ability to collect pleasant memories”

  Meeting new people also provides the brain with a lot of information to chew on, since we experience new personalities, accents, facial expressions, and body language. Having meaningful and interesting social interactions will therefore create rich long-term memories and longer recalled durations. Joining a social club, a book club, or perhaps a hobby group where you can constantly meet new people will help in slowing down time. Spending time with people you love also slows down time. This is even more important, since relationships form the pillar of a purposeful life.

  Another way to increase the number of memories is to supply your brain with new information so that it is constantly learning new things. This could be a new language, a new course, or a new skill. In fact, researchers at Penn State University found that learning a second language changes the brain’s network, making it more flexible and efficient. 163 It is also never too late to start the things we always wanted to do but never found the time to. Learn to play a musical instrument, read a do-it-yourself book, or start a new hobby. Keep challenging yourself and raise the bar with progressively higher goals. Surround yourself with inspiring people. It could be an intellectual friend, a kind-hearted pal, or perhaps your old friend from high school! Indulge in intellectual and cultural events, or maybe write a book! The key is to keep your brain active by regularly supplying it with fresh information! Essentially, become a student again and do not ever stop learning. This will boost the number of memory markers you collect every day, thus slow down time.

  Imagine being invited to spend a few days on the most wondrous and exciting island that is splendid in beauty and magical in every way. An inquisitive mind would soak in every sensation, would learn about the tiniest details, get immersed in every experience, and be constantly alert to capture every mental snapshot from that exhilarating place. As a result, their experience of the time spent there would stretch. A disinterested person, on the other hand, would not care to learn or absorb anything around them. Their primary concern would be merely eating, drinking, and sleeping. Their recollection of the few days spent on that island will barely make an impression in their mind and will shrink into practically nothing.

  Well, you do not have to wait for such a special invitation, you are already there. There is no island that is more wondrous and exciting than this beautiful planet we live on. As Jules Renard has said, “On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it everywhere.” We have all been given an exclusive VIP invitation, a privilege denied to many, to spend a limited amount of time here and we must decide how to make best use of it. The world is full of sensations waiting to be become memorable reminiscences, marvelous encounters waiting to be experienced, and spectacular wonders waiting to be observed. The great Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran said it well: “Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet, and the winds long to play with your hair.” So do not wait until it is too late; the purpose of life is to live it to the fullest. We just need to be alert, intent to observe, willing to inquire, and open to learn, so that we may enjoy it and stretch it as long as possible.

  Improving Our Attention and Memory

  To be able to focus on living in the moment and collect memorable mental snapshots, it also helps to improve the capacity of our short-term memory and attention span. As we grow older, it is quite normal to forget things. We forget what we had for breakfast or where we put our keys. Sometimes you walk into a room and forget why. You meet a new colleague at work then immediately forget her name. This is a sign of ageing, and it is the biggest cause of short-term memory loss. Our brains stop growing and actually start shrinking from the age of 20.

  However, there are several ways to improve short-term memory and prevent that deterioration from seriously affecting our time experience. Several self-help books are available on brain training and learning memory techniques. I recommend Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer or any of Tony Buzan’s books. Studies have found that dementia is delayed in elderly people who do crosswords, puzzles, read, and play card games. Online apps and memory improvement games that come with a daily dose of memory training are also quite helpful. I recommend Luminosity or Fit Brains, which are free online brain training apps that offer a wide range of scientifically proven memory games for all ages. In addition, consuming a healthy brain diet or taking memory supplements is another way to improve memory.

  Building Anticipation

  Anticipation of a positive event slows down time. When we have to wait for something to happen, time feels like it runs more slowly. In most cases, this might be annoying, but we can use that to our advantage. For instance, you could build anticipation and excitement when planning a date or organizing a long summer vacation. That anticipation will increase your alertness level and direct your attention to the passing time causing it to slow down, in a pleasant and exciting way. Anticipation also increases the intensity of our emotions. Most people, for instance, experience deep emotional reactions when anticipating their Thanksgiving holiday than when they later recall it. 164 Anticipation is more intense than retrospection. This is because future events are less certain than past events and uncertainty amplifies emotions. As we saw previously, more intense emotions slow the speed of time.

  We also saw that when we recall a past vacation, it will only seem long if it contained lots of interesting memories. But research has shown that anticipating a future vacation will also slow down the time leading up to it. Moreover, it seems that people derive more pleasure planning their vacation than later recalling it. The reason is future uncertainty. Your highly anticipated beach holiday might turn out different in many ways compared to the one way it ended up happening. There are many more beaches you might visit, many more restaurants you might eat in, many more places you might see, and many more people you might meet, than the actual beach, restaurant, sites, and people you ended up seeing. This uncertainty makes an anticipated vacation more exciting and amplifies the pleasant rewards in your mind.

  Research on how people enjoy their vacation has concluded that anticipating and planning a vacation is even more enjoyable than the vacation itself. It is like Winnie-the-Pooh describing his love for honey, “Well, although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were”. But Winnie did not know what that moment was called. It is a moment of eager anticipation that heightens mental arousal and slows time. People look forward to their vacations and, for most, the enjoyment starts weeks, even months, before the vacation does. That is what researchers from the Netherlands found when they surveyed 1,530 Dutch vacationers and measured their happiness levels before and after they took their vacation. 165 The largest boost in happiness came from the simple act of planning the vacation. Anticipation boosted happiness for about eight weeks prior to the vacation. After the vacation, happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels in a matter of just two to three weeks, regardless of how long the vacation lasted. In brief, expecting a good thing is sometimes more enjoyable than actually experiencing it. 166 Therefore, you can get more fun out of several small vacations in a year than from one big one.

  But you do not have to plan everything to the last detail to create more anticipation. Just having
a rough itinerary before the trip is enough to increase excitement. The level of planning has to also be balanced against how much you leave for chance. It is beneficial to introduce some spontaneity to a certain extent, instead of planning every move. Any unexpected surprises make us more alert and the vacation becomes more adventurous, as we look forward to what will happen next. A friend of mine experienced the longest vacation of his life when he took a two-week trip with his girlfriend on a 5,000 km tour on bike in India. Without any prior hotel bookings and much erratic weather, the adventure boosted their alertness and created so much anticipation that time slowed down and the trip was more memorable.

  The more you spend time planning, talking about, and anticipating an event, while keeping a certain level of spontaneity, the more enjoyable it will be and the slower time will seem to flow. This principle can be applied to any area of your life. Therefore, always have something to anticipate, something nice to wake up to in the morning, or an exciting thing to do after work. It could be seeing a person, doing a hobby, or simply just eating great food. Anything that excites you and spur your creativity will make you happier and having constant anticipation in your life will slow it down.

  Time is not Money

  As we already saw, time is actually more precious than money because it is our most scarce resource. It is absurd how we are willing to spend our time to earn more money, but reluctant to spend money in stretching and slowing down time. We spend our precious time making money, but that is worthless if it is not spent on creating exciting memories that can stretch out our remembered past and make life more fulfilling. In a sense, money can create more subjective time when it is spent on enjoying life and generating memories that are necessary for expanding the perception of our lifespan.

  We saw in the book’s introduction that a Gallup survey of 450,000 Americans concluded that when people’s annual income went beyond 75,000 U.S dollars, they became more satisfied but not happier. There is a limit to how much money can make us happy. 2 It follows logically that any time spent on making more than 75,000 U.S dollars a year is, in a sense, wasted time. Additionally, if we think of time in terms of money, rather than spending our time on interesting experiences, we will end up working longer hours to make more money. Relaxing at the pool becomes a waste of time. Having dinner with the family becomes a luxury that is hard to justify. Even when we manage to take some time off, it will be rushed by the worry that we could be working more. The result is we stop enjoying life and miss it entirely as it swiftly slips by.

  Moreover, recent research has confirmed that, paradoxically, the more you work, the less you get done. Bringing home more work, or constantly checking your email in the evening or over the weekend does not help. An interesting rule called Parkinson’s Law states that your workload will expand to whatever time you allocate for its completion.

  The proof is in what psychologists refer to as the Vacation Paradox (different from the Holiday Paradox) which states that you may never be able to finish all your work on a regular day, but a couple of days before you go on vacation, you somehow manage to complete everything in addition to that backlog of work that has been stacking up on your desk. This is only possible because when you have an endpoint to your workday, you will work more efficiently. Having an end to work will not only help you to work more efficiently, but life will slow down and you will live a more balanced and fulfilling life.

  Researchers have also confirmed that people who are constantly “connected” to technology are generally more anxious and perceive time as flowing faster than usual. In this day and age, emails and social media have become an integral part of our lives. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, or Snapchat, we constantly check for updates and that can become addictive. This steals precious time away from other, more meaningful things that actually make us happy. It is far better to check emails only twice a day. Choose one or two social media channels and check them once or twice a day at most. The time you save can be used to start a new hobby.

  In his 1962 book, Of Time, Work and Leisure, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and political scientist Sebastian de Grazia gives a great advice: “Lean back under a tree, put your arms behind your head, wonder at the pass we’ve come to, smile and remember that the beginnings and ends of man’s every great enterprise are untidy.” Recall that old Buddhist wisdom: “Act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference.”

  Resisting Time Pressure

  Are you a “rushaholic”? Do you happen to live in one of those fast-paced cities where you feel in perpetual hurry? A recent poll of over 1,000 Americans found that nearly half felt they lacked enough time in daily life. “Time famine” is the feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it and it is the cause of unnecessary stress and reduced performance. We all tend to rush when we have so many things to do. So we start multi-tasking, which negatively affects our performance. Doing things quickly actually ends up slowing you down, such as when you rush out of your house only to realize you forgot your keys on the kitchen table. Assuming that by doing things faster you will get more done is a trap. Driving faster will not get you to your destination any sooner (unless you really intended to visit the hospital). Rushing things also affects the quality of your experiences. Ever finished eating a meal without tasting any of it? Rushing will not give you more time, but will sap the pleasure and value from the time that you already have.

  If you try to recall the evening when you were preparing dinner while helping your kids with homework and chatting with your friend, you will not remember too many details and that evening will seem short. If you jump from one project to another, you will not be dedicating enough attention to each task and, as a result, you will not perform it properly. With less devoted attention, the internal clock counter starts missing ticks, and time flies. Therefore, do not rush whatever you are doing. Resist deadline pressure, stay calm, breathe slowly, and focus on one thing at a time.

  It helps also to take a step back and make an honest assessment of the really important things that need to be done. Pick three things to accomplish each day. Stop taking on more commitments and learn to say no. You will feel better when you are not under pressure to do all things in the shortest time possible. By simply choosing the things that really matter to you, the things you are passionate about, and dropping the rest, you will focus better and life will less stressful and time will slow down. A slower and simpler life is a happier life.

  It also helps to be proactive and stay one step ahead. Being reactive only adds more worries, stress, and last minute workloads. Your attention will be diluted and your brain will be unable to record any significant memories, so that week will fly in retrospect. It would be better to concentrate on finishing one task and doing it to completion before moving onto the next one. This is true of everyday tasks, such as finishing one book before starting to read another, and of bigger life goals, like writing a best-seller book, composing the next hit song, winning an Olympic gold medal, or simply swimming with the dolphins! When this philosophy is applied to various areas in your life, you will relax and start to focus more on the “now,” which will cause life to slow down. Therefore, stop multi-tasking, plan your priorities, try to complete them one at a time, and above all, take your sweet time about it!

  “A slower and simpler life is a happier life.”

  Inducing Feelings of Awe

  One last thing to consider for slowing down time is the need to change our perspective and, rather than getting bogged down, taking a step back and looking at the big picture. It helps to actually believe that time is more abundant than it seems. Inducing feelings of awe, as we saw earlier, will help in expanding time and our view on things. It does not have to involve religious or mystical experiences. Stunning natural landscapes or amazing works of art and music can open up our mind and produce the same effect. Such mind-expanding experiences will c
reate the feeling that we have more time to accomplish the tasks we are doing. With that mindset, we will be able to relax in the present and have enough time to achieve the things we want.

  This is even more important if we actually use that extra time to contribute, even in a tiny way, to making the world a better place. In fact, several studies have observed that what goes through the minds of people on their death beds is not fast cars or more money, but their lasting impact on this world. Is the world a better place because you were here or not? We each have a unique gift to contribute, and those who contribute most, die with a smile on their face.

  Epilogue

  With all the tips that we covered so far, I hope you’ve gotten some ideas about how to slow the flow of time in your life. And remember that even if you feel that so many years have already been lost, it is actually never too late to make the most of what is left, even in old age. Every day is the first day of the rest of your life, so you can still make the most of it. In order to feel as though we have lived a long and fulfilling life, we should constantly aim to fill our infinitely precious time with vibrant and intriguing experiences to make every second count, at every point in your life, even to the last one. No one said it better than the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gently into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”