Sometimes it feels like weeks or months can go by in a blink. Do you have any tips to feel like time passes slower?
Sometimes it feels like weeks or months can go by in a blink. Do you have any tips to feel like time passes slower?
I know journaling might be one, and doing new things from time to time, curious if people have other tips
just do more non-routine stuff
This 100%. My partner and I bought a house in October, and we've been doing a complete remodel on it since, spending anywhere from 30 - 40 hours a week working on the house while also working full time. This has easily been the fastest 6 months of my life and I feel like I'm going to blink and be 80 years old on my death bed.
Routines are the enemy of slowing time!
Plank position slows things down a lot.
+1 all isometric exercises are slo-mo inducing.
Ah, Plank's constant
Watch this vsauce video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHL9GP_B30E
tldr: retrospective perception of time depends on how many different things you remember happening. If you remember many things, it seems long. So do many things that you will remember.
Ah man I’m not gonna remember that
Maybe there's such a thing as too many different things.
Practice mindfulness and enjoy the present.
One of the handful of good things that got pushed by the new age movement. Mindfulness is a skill, and like others, you get better at it with practice. It has no drawbacks that I am aware of.
I started a diary. It's a nice check in that I can do with myself whenever I feel like it. It's a good way to take yourself out of autopilot and putting conscious attention at the goings on in your life.
Plus you get to read it later and see how things have actually changed!
I think that's a great idea! I've often wanted to start journaling or a diary, but I am disabled and spend most days miserable and in pain stuck at home or in bed, just trying to distract myself from my symptoms (usually by browsing the Internet, since I don't have many options) to get through the day, so I don't really know what to write each day, ya know? I'm commenting in hopes that maybe it'll help me actually start in some way, lol. Especially because my memory can be pretty spotty and iffy. Maybe I'll just write about how I don't know what to write, haha!
Intense exercise, particularly cardio. Search for a good interval workout and push yourself to a barely-sustainable threshold pace. You'll find yourself saying, "When is this going to end!? I can't wait for this to be over!" Also do this in the mornings so you feel like you have the entire rest of the day to enjoy.
Trying new things and having meditative hobbies like journaling does help some, but time is a real mother fucker regardless. I'm a person who has done many many new things and filled notebooks with drawings and poems. Those things still become blips of the past as I hurtle onwards through aging. Nothing can really save you from that feeling. It's a curse we all bear as part of our beautiful and terrible awareness. You can, in the moment, perceive it a bit slower though.
It's a simple trick and it doesn't last long, but it can help if the feeling is particularly crushing at the moment. Stare at a clock; preferably a noisy analog one with a seconds hand. Concentrate on the passing of that seconds hand, the noise it makes, the motion of the clockwork, the way the light reflects off it's face and shit like that. Relax your muscles and let the passage of seconds lull you into boredom. Before you know it, time seems less speedy and you're ready to do whatever else.It's basic, but it's something very few people actually make time for. Mainly because it's boring lol, but that's kind of the point. Want time to slow down? Allow yourself to be bored. Not bored while at work bored either. Proper doing absolutely nothing but staring at a ticking clock bored. Time will slow to a crawl until you start doing stuff again.
Thank you for your insightful comment!
Finding opportunities for challenge. Comfort usually means you are not being challenged. Just plopping down and watching crap all night will not be remembered.
Time seeming shorter is just the temporal equivalent of depth perception. You have to put as many distinct things between your present and the future, in the same way distinct objects between you and a distant object makes it look further away.
This is the answer.
Our brains are designed to ignore ordinary things. When you drive the same way to work, do the same things at work all day, come home and ready a familiar meal, then veg out in front of the TV, you've done nothing memorable all day.
Then, in retrospect, the days seem to fly by because you don't have any memory of the time passing.
If you deliberately inject novelty into your days, then you'll have more memory of the events, and your days will seem full.
The other ones here related to memory (journaling both for being mindful of your days but also to reread and trigger the memory retention curve) will also help. I haven't seen sleep mentioned, but good sleep is also key to being alert enough to encode memories, having the energy to try novel things, and rest enough to store and process memories for longer-term retention.
Research also says a 20 minute mid-day nap can help with memory formation (not 50 minutes; a full sleep cycle will make you groggy in the afternoon.)
Put it to use. Accomplish something. The grind will be boring, but will go by quickly.
I think they are looking for the opposite effect!
Work somewhere really boring.
Classical music performances. You have to be present for every minute of it to really get it, no fucking around on your phone or whatever. Just get lost in a sea of music and time slows to that tempo.
In my experience there are two very different types of slow time: boredom and adrenaline (especially from danger). Lack of stimulation vs extreme amounts of stimulation.
It's old school, but slow down, and smell the roses.
I see others in this conversation talking about doing routine things, but I would actually argue for the exact opposite of that.
Try doing crazy impromptu things at the spur of the moment sometimes, for no real reason. Like for example, one morning get up and decide just to go to a marine aquarium and look at the fishes (or a local museum). Things like that.
Try to appreciate the moment you're in, and create new moments that are memorable, and are not routine.
Sorry but can't help. It seems to move faster and faster as I get older.
Homework for Life | Matthew Dicks | TEDxBerkshires
Read "Catch 22"