How to Slow Down Time
One of the most striking features of aging is how the perception of time changes over the years. In childhood, time seems endless: a week can seem like a year, and a year can seem like a whole life. But with age, time seems to speed up. Sure, a particularly grueling work day can drag on, but years seemingly pass in seconds, and you may find that a decade is as fast as a lunch break.
Why does time fly so fast with age? Routine. When you are young, new experiences leave indentations in your memory, leaving you feeling like an extended time. But when you do the same thing over and over again, your brain merges the repetitive actions into one memory, giving the impression that time has shortened.
“Routine kills our memory for specific periods of time,” says psychologist and time researcher Mark Wittmann, Ph.D. “If nothing significant happened, our brain will not be able to record anything, and time is subjectively reduced.” This is why, for example, it is difficult to remember individual commutes to work, as your brain converts 261 train rides into one single memory.
This phenomenon has become even more dramatic amid the pandemic. For those of us working from home, every day is exactly the same, in the same place, without any of the usual activities – travel, restaurants, friends and family – that spice up the routine at normal times. After a period of seemingly endless isolation (not to mention grief, fear and sadness), people now leave their homes and find that more than a year has passed without even noticing it.
Wittmann notes that the similarities really hit our brains. “Let’s say before the pandemic, on Sundays, you went to barbecues with friends, watched football and drank beer, and then [went back] to work on Monday; you will be charged from Sunday to Monday, ”he says. “It disappeared during the pandemic. Every day is a “spotted day,” and in retrospect, everything is just one messy source. The length of time is shrinking. “
As Wittmann notes, time passes too quickly evokes emotion. This speaks of our existentialism as a biological species. “We have the idea of linear time, and we only have a certain time to live,” he says. “The only direction is not to a beautiful place, but to a place that we call old age and death.”
The bad news is, until someone finally finds the Fountain of Youth, there is little you can do about the direction of time. But there are ways to slow down the way time feels , so let’s say you don’t look 10 months later and wonder how your child finished the entire school year, or even remember taking him to school every day. Here are some tips:
Change your daily routine
This is obvious: if a routine kills time (and memory), then the best way to save time for a quick death is to break that routine. There is little you can do with your usual responsibilities, such as work, but you can puzzle over the same day to day.
Psychologist Lauren Soeiro, Ph.D. ABPP , says even small changes in your daily routine can help stretch out time. “There are ways to strive for novelty and differentiation, even if they do not require a lot of time and money,” he says. “You don’t need to go on vacation, eat on the road or anything else. Just break up your workday – walk around the neighborhood, meet a friend for a cup of coffee in the middle of the day. Something that makes it a little fresher. “
Other changes include: taking a different route to work, listening to a new album every day, using your lunch break to explore a different part of your (or your workplace) neighborhood, scheduling new activities after work for as many days of the week. as you can, learning a new language or a new tool, preparing a new meal a few days a week, etc.
Travel (responsibly!)
One of the best ways to stretch your time is to move to a new location. Even one weekend away from home can feel longer than home on your very familiar couch.
“Staying home all weekend, messing around and watching a Netflix series quickly fades away,” says Wittmann. “Compare that to a weekend in Paris with friends where you have exciting activities and do some sightseeing and then come back and say, ‘Oh, that was so long ago.” Your brain can write so much in just these two days. If you mess around at home, nothing happens and time goes by. “
If you can, try taking vacations in new places rather than returning to the same ones, although after a year at home, any place that is not your own space will stimulate memorization.
Break your goals down into little chunks that you can cross off your list.
One of the concerns in the wake of the pandemic, Soeiro said, is that the past year not only passed quickly but was lost. “I hear it all the time. It has to do with things like, ‘Where am I in relation to my goals? A year has passed and nothing has changed,’ he says. made the situation worse. “
If you feel like the pandemic has left you behind, the good news is that you can still start reaching those goals right now. “If you make changes tomorrow, you will still be different. You did make this change, ”says Soeiro. “It doesn’t matter that nothing happened last year. Don’t be discouraged about how long it will take to get here. “
For those trying to get started, Soeiro suggests breaking down a large goal into a series of smaller goals – while these steps may seem tiny, completing a small goal will make the distance to your final goal much less daunting.
“Make a to-do list, include your little goals, and cross them out one by one,” says Soeiro. “If all you have to do is fill out an application for anything, even if this is the first part of your efforts to go to graduate school or find a new job, filling out the application is valid and will give you momentum. … “
Actively notice new things
This method sounds simplistic, but it works. Keep track of small changes in your familiar environment so that new memories break through your routine.
If you have plants, watch the growth of their leaves. If you have pets, teach them new tricks. If you have children, shrink them, count their teeth, check posters of new bands on their bedroom walls if they invite you (don’t spy). Pay attention to how the sunlight changes in your living room during the day. Little things matter
Meditate
In general, more presence slows down time, and meditation is a great way to achieve this. Wittmann says that techniques such as mindfulness and focusing on the breath help you “control” your perception of time.
“My idea of how we perceive time is through our body,” he says. “We do not have an ordinary sense organ, we sense time through the passage of our interoceptive bodily states. When you focus on your body, time slows down. “
Besides expanding your perception of time, meditation can relieve stress and anxiety. You don’t have to sit in silence for hours to reap the benefits; There are a number of apps that can help you get started with meditation, even if you can only spend a few minutes a week.
Keep a journal
Your brain may not keep track of all of your recurring memories, but your journal can. If you write down a few thoughts, feelings, and memories a day, you will save those memories before your brain mixes them together, and re-examining them later will help you remember the wasted time.
“Journaling helps you strengthen your narrative memory and your narrative self,” says Wittmann. “Researchers have shown that when you update the contents of your memory over a period of time, time increases relatively.”
(Just maybe don’t go back to, say, your high school journal. The swelling isn’t worth the time.)
Take pictures
As with journaling, taking photographs helps create a narrative record that will preserve your memories even after your brain erases them. But don’t take too many photographs, as research shows that being addicted to photography can impair your actual memory of the event you are trying to document, which is contrary to purpose.
Don’t punish yourself
Here’s the thing – no matter how much you meditate, keep a journal, or shake up your daily routine, time slips out of your fingers. And if you are particularly worried about goals that you failed to achieve, or moments that you failed to capture in the last year of the pandemic, take a break.
“It was a very frightening year,” says Soeiro. “There were many losses, there were many unexpected, frightening and sad events. We were all held back, everyone was detained, and it was quite scary. “
This post was edited after publication to correct the misspelled name of the cited expert Mark Wittmann.