One of the annoying aspects of aging is how life starts to speed up. Feeling like time flies past you can be discouraging and you wonder when days, months, or even years have passed. However, we are not doomed. Your sense of time is strange and flexible: it stretches, contracts, reaches a dead end. And you can shape it to some extent to move to your own rhythm. This article is about how to slow down time.
When you encounter something familiar, time seems to shrink, and when you acquire new knowledge, it expands. Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains:
This relationship between the elasticity of time and whether your brain is processing new information explains why time seems to increase in pace as it ages. As the world begins to become more familiar, we learn less, and sometimes even seek information and experiences that match what we already know. As you age, you have less adventure, play, exploration, creativity, and wonder that you might be new to.
The way you spend your time influences how you perceive it. Thus, the choices you make about what to do now affect how you will manage your time later.
There are some ways to make your days richer and more memorable so that your sense of time expands and life does not pass you by.
How to slow down time with learning and new experiences
Time that accelerates as you get older is nothing new. In 1890, William James described this exact experience in Principles of Psychology:
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James defined how the automatic nature of subroutines meant that learning did not occur for a century before Dina Avni Babad and Ilana Ritov experienced this phenomenon. In experiments examining the perception of time in routine and non-traditional situations, the researchers found that people remember the duration of habitual circumstances as shorter.
In one study, participants had to count how many times underlined numbers appeared on each line of a list of numbers and then estimated how long it took to complete a task. For the “normal” group, the underlined number was always 5, while it was changed for the “non-routine” group. Even in these simple, almost identical tasks, the slightest novelty provided by the combination of underlined numbers, rather than 5, expanded the estimate of the length of the non-routine group's time.
To combat the effect of automatic routines, fill your time with new knowledge. Turn your brain resources into new tasks or projects and learn new skills. Ask questions and train your curious muscles. Travel more often or change your environment. Hug your inner child and go in search of new sensations.
You will find that life stops passing by so quickly when you stop doing the same thing every day.
So now you know one way to slow down time through learning and new experiences.
But why does time slow down when you're not having fun?
If time has to shrink when you are doing something routine, then why does time seem to drag on so slowly while it actually does?
There is a difference between how time feels, how you experience it, and how you remember it. Avni Babad and Ritov explain that routine frees the brain instead of fully reusing it with new information: "The automatic nature of the routine leaves resources of attention for monitoring time." When you are doing a chore, time seems to slow down.
Remembering how long something has been done is a "constructive process of recalling points of change." This supposedly memory of new knowledge, experiences and events is how you perceive the passage of time. And this memory helps in making decisions about how to manage your time in the future.
How to Slow Time Using Event Memories
Context also affects how you perceive time. Thus, the importance of events can determine if time has a greater tendency to compress or stretch.
A 2006 study led by Gal Sauberman provides a good example of how this works. In this experiment, participants calculated how many months have passed since some news events, such as the death of Anna Nicole Smith, the statement by US President Barack Obama, and Britney Spears shaving her head. Participants were also required to assess whether these targeted events triggered subsequent events. In general, people underestimated the passage of time by about 3 months.
However, if people believe that certain events triggered more subsequent events, they feel that more time has passed. Related events act as memory anchors, stretching your sense of time - while unrelated events do not have this effect. So if you paid close attention to Obama's first presidential campaign, but did not follow the many public trials and tribulations of Britney Spears, you would think that more time has passed since the announcement, although both events took place within a week of each other.
The brooding and frustration you get when life seems to be speeding up is due to the fact that you notice another month or birthday or year passing by - but you haven't actually taken any steps towards what you wanted. A controversial lesson from Sauberman's research is that time seems to pass faster because you took no action, and you can slow it down by making progress on projects and goals.
Making and recognizing progress not only creates intrinsic motivation, it also prevents you from slipping into the void of automatic, forgettable routines. When you think about how you first started a skill or worked towards a goal, such as stepping up or learning to do your job well, it feels like forever because you've made a lot of progress. There are many important stages along the way.
As you put your intentions into practice and take the time to celebrate your progress, you will create a series of memories to look back on as you think about time.
While you may feel like you have less and less time, don't be sad that life is passing you by. Instead, spend time actively and create new memories.
Fill the chapters of your journey with new experiences and you will find yourself moving through life at a slower pace.