Perception of Time
The origin of time comes from the earth’s rotation and revolution around the sun. But the nature of time has been a topic of extensive philosophical, scientific, and metaphysical inquiry for centuries. A great way to put it in our modern time is - Time is the amount of experience. While time is a constant, its perception is intimately tied to our experiences and consciousness.
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 - Albert Einstein
The simple act of idle waiting for 30 minutes feels everlasting. While playing games or watching reels on Instagram for the same 30 minutes, time flies by. Two sides of the same coin. If you feel your day ends pretty quickly, it could be for a reason that you are overloaded - attempting to do too much, or just madly obsessed over something. On the other side, if you feel that time is creeping up and the day lasts forever, most of the time it’s because of the tasks that we don’t really wanna do.
One theory behind the varied perception of time is based on novelty and consciousness.
A child’s brain takes up ~60% of idle energy for the initial childhood as every experience is unique and the brain is absorbing them for the first time. So as we grow older, the novelty decreases, and we get accustomed to the realities around us. The repetition makes the experience no longer a memorable one and its perception keeps getting compressed.
A good example of this would be your daily commute’s duration. Looking back, you’ll realize the time you travel from the same route repeatedly is not a strong memory. And the experience itself feels short-lived - as if you are zoned out on autopilot mode. As a result, the feeling that time is passing by faster when we get older is completely natural.
However, you feel the passage of time more attentively when you travel, or when you are on a vacation. Novelty again. Your brain experiences completely new and out of the routine aspects of life. Working like a kid’s brain and in turn making stronger connections for them. That’s one of the reasons, you have strong memories of that specific trip even after months or years of completion.
The solution for both of these is to be more mindful. Whenever you feel time is passing very fast and you don’t have a hold of it, pause. Relax. Take a few deep and controlled breaths. This will allow the amygdala to push a little bit of serotonin into your bloodstream and start neutralizing the adrenaline effect. Clearing your thoughts and pausing for a moment, will help you get back in the present moment and zoom out. And if time passes really slowly, somewhat a different reaction to the same symptom. You are better off accepting the task at hand and completing it at your best approach.
Keep injecting novelty. Change your routes of regular commute, shuffle, and add new activities to your daily routine. Mindful practices like meditation, and walking without distractions are helpful. This will help you build a better sense of time, and build better memories. As memories are the only things we have apart from the present moment. They are a gift to your future self, so try to create good ones. And not the ones we know we’ll regret later.