The Bizarre Reality That We Can Change Our Own Perception Of Time.
We’ve all experienced that bizarre feeling that when we were younger, the days seem to go longer.
As you get older, time feels like it gets faster.
Today I had one of those moments that defies the norm. I had a shower and just stood there looking at the water fall from the shower head.
Time seemed to slow down.
My mind stopped racing a hundred miles an hour, and time seemed to stand still. I looked at the clock after this moment and only a minute or two had passed.
Another moment caused me to think about how we perceive time. It was a Linkedin troll who said: “Tim, you seem like you lived so many lives, how can any of what you say be true?”
I thought about what he said. I have lived many lives in my short, thirty-two years of life because I’ve done a lot of things. I got into business when I was sixteen; then I became a DJ, then a producer, and then started several more businesses. After that, I spent seven years working in finance and eCommerce.
Now I work in tech and Digital Marketing and lead a team. Since 2014 I have been on this epic blogging journey that from the outside might not seem real or plausible. All of this has happened in what many would say is a short period of time — and they’d be right.
These two scenarios have led me to the idea that we can speed up and slow down time based on a number of different factors. David Eagleman seems to have some pretty good evidence to back this up.
David Eagleman has spent more than a decade studying the brains biological clock which causes many of the experiences/hacks I’ll describe below, to occur.
David says to try this exercise to see just how your brain affects your perception of time:
Eagleman’s books highlight that it’s still unclear how many internal clocks our bodies contain.
Parkinson’s disease has already been shown to leave a humans ability to time split seconds intact but completely mess up time intervals of a few seconds. The cerebellum, basal ganglia and parts of the cortex have all been suggested as potential timekeepers in the human body, but there is no agreement, as yet, on which one.
In an article written about Eagleman, he talks about how our human sensors have different reaction times and it doesn’t all happen in sync. Benjamin Libet, whose work Eagleman has followed says:
One of the most interesting things Eagleman says is this:
Using these learnings, we may be able to explain part of why the ways in which my own perception of time has been able to be changed.
Some of my life memories above are crystal clear yet the seven years working in finance feels like it only lasted a year, if that.
My everyday habits and patterns could have been influencing my perception of time based on Eagleman’s research.
Eagleman says:
In another story that was emailed to Eagleman, we can see the perception of time change again.
A museum curator describes how he witnessed an expensive vase take forever to actually fall to the ground once it was knocked over. It felt like a long time, according to the curator, even though it wasn’t.
Eagleman has also done another study of drummers and the way they interpret time. This fascinated me as I used to be a drummer myself for eight years. Over the last two decades, metronomes (click tracks) have been used to keep drummers in time and it has had an adverse effect. The feel and groove of a song has been somewhat lost.
To overcome this perception of time by drummers, click tracks and metronomes are often altered to drift in and out of time in live concerts. In the studio, sound engineers use several computer plugins, like beat detective, which have templates to help move a drum beat in and out of time, to make the song feel more human.
Having a drum beat feel more human, by manipulating time, is a fascinating idea when you think about it. The very technology we use to make the timing of a beat perfect is the same tool that is having a negative effect on how we perceive the feeling a song gives us — thus our perception of time that a beat gives us in the process.
The research that Eagleman has does is far and wide and I won’t go through all of it with you here.
The simplistic conclusion to his research is: Time is not what we think it is.
Move house, change job or date someone different. Time slows down when we make a drastic change.
It’s why when people decide to live in a different country their perception of time changes. It’s this beautiful sensation of how we interpret time that makes some people addicted to travel and living in different countries.
Last year I quit my job, moved house, got a new girlfriend, went to Europe and changed my circle of friends. Through all of these changes, I felt time change. The week I moved house felt like it lasted for half the year when in reality it was only a few weeks.
Through the process of change, I also made the decision to give away most of my belongings which changed my environment. Overnight, everything I’d built over the last seven years had been torn to pieces.
This process of destruction has seriously messed with how I experience time — in essence, things have slowed down.
Drastic change can make you feel like time has slowed down.
The working week is madness for me. I’m in back-to-back meetings and facing the same challenges over and over, every single day.
There are weeks where days feel like they blend into each other.
Last year I committed to taking Thursday off every week — thus breaking up the week — to pursue my side hustle of blogging and social media. The way my week felt changed. The weeks seemed to move slower and I found myself being able to get into my creative zone.
Instead of being desperate to get home because I felt like I didn’t have enough time to pursue my side hustle, I began to relax because it felt as if I had time to do both work and my side hustle.
Habits cause us to be on autopilot and that might seem helpful. It has its downsides though.
When you repeat the same patterns every day — like many people’s day jobs — your brain operates in autopilot meaning that you will most likely create fewer memories.
It’s for this reason that my career in finance/eCommerce which lasted for seven years feels as if it only lasted twelve months. Thinking back to when I was a kid, the school holidays felt as though they lasted for months even though it was only two weeks.
Why is this?
Breaking up your habits has the power to change how you perceive time.
Ever been in a life-threatening situation?
Were you around to witness September 11th?
My most vivid memory of time slowing down was when I was sixteen years old and I was randomly attacked by a gang of youths on my way home, with my good mate by my side.
I was beaten to a pulp with a baseball bat while my friend standing next to me was stabbed continuously with a knife while I watched, knowing I was next. I remember this situation like it was yesterday.
The strangest part was that my mind had a thought which was “This must be what it’s like to die so enjoy these last few moments.”
Thinking the end was coming made time go into slow motion.
I watched my whole life pass me by.
It’s as if I could finally see the point to everything I’d ever experienced.
After this violent act occurred, I managed to escape. I looked at the time and realized that the whole experience had only been a few minutes yet my perception of time felt like it had lasted for hours.
My story is not unique. There have been many people that have witnessed time slow down while facing a life or death situation.
It was after a few of these surreal, life-threatening experiences that my perception of time changed again.
Unconsciously, I began linking everything I did in life to my mortality. I thought about time every day in the context of what actions I was taking.
Thinking about mortality so frequently made me appreciate time even more. I began to crave the moments in which I could slow down time — such as meditation — because time had a different meaning and I wanted to experience life in a different way.
Thinking about mortality with everything you do can also help you perceive time differently.
Our perception and the reality are vastly different and therefore, the idea that we can change our own perception of time and even slow time down is not that far fetched. It has certainly been a reality for me as described above. Think about your perception of time.
It’s entirely possible that you can find a way to slow down your perception of time and therefore enjoy your life and live it to its fullest potential.
We can’t live longer, but it’s entirely possible we can slow our perception of time down.
The Bizarre Reality That We Can Change Our Own Perception Of Time.
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