How to Slow Time Down
“Very often when we remark, ‘How did time fly by so quickly?’ what’s actually meant is some version of ‘I don’t remember where the time went.”
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I have a few questions for you… Have you ever had a day or weekend that seemed to stretch out? Where time seemed to slow down, and you were able to truly enjoy living that day? Many of us have had those experiences. But on the flip side, I grew up hearing my grandparents say, “Time sure does fly!”. Once my children were born, I’d get comments like “They’ll be grown before you know it!” or “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it!”. As my family and I hit a new milestone last week with my son completing kindergarten, I’ve been reflecting a lot on time and how non-constant this supposedly constant concept really operates.
Ask a busy woman if she’d like more time and her answer would likely be “Yes!”. Time is one of our most valuable resources, mostly because it is finite. Each and every one of us only have 24 hours in a day and cannot do anything to add a second, minute, or hour to it. Although extra time would definitely help with meeting our work and family demands, if we think about it, the underlying reason that we want more time is so that we can create more memories.
In my last post, I discussed some practical ways to make your summer productive, peaceful, and memorable. Today, I want to dig into the memorable part a bit more. I just finished reading Laura Vanderkam’s “Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done.” In chapter 2 of the book, she discusses time and how to feel like you have more of it.
The key? Making things memorable.
According to Vanderkam, “The existence of memories turns out to have profound implications for how we feel about time: whether it is scarce or abundant, whether it feels full or like it has slipped through our fingers.”
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You see, our brains are extremely efficient at cataloging information. We can remember simple things in the short-term such as fixing breakfast in the morning, getting the coffee out of the microwave, or refilling the kids’ water bottle for the 100th time (or is that just me?). However, a lot of what happens each day gets archived deep down or tossed in the trash because our brains have decided that it’s not worth holding onto. Think about it… What were you doing on today’s date last year? Two years ago? Chances are, you don’t remember… I know I certainly don’t.
The reason we don’t necessarily remember those days is because they likely looked a lot like today. You were operating based on your routine. Now, we’ve talked a lot about the value of routines on this podcast. Routines are great because they give our brains a break. When we know exactly what to do and when and how to do it, we can be more efficient and save our cognitive energy for things that matter the most. However, when it comes to memory, our routines just aren’t that memorable. In the book, Vanderkam illustrates this by discussing our morning commutes to work.
“The brain decides that if you drive the same one-hour route to work 235 mornings a year, and you do so for the roughly 4.25 years that compose the average job tenure, these one-thousand trips can be telescoped in memory into one trip.”
Think about that for a minute… 1,000 hours of your life were just reduced to 1 hour worth of memories. Given the number of mundane activities we do as adults, it’s no wonder that our grandparents feel as though time is flying by!
You might be thinking, “Now wait a minute. My commute feels like it drags on forever!”. In her Ted Talk, “Time is Memory and You Can Control It,” Lila Davachi discusses how the passage of time can feel differently in the moment than it does retrospectively. In the moment, our experiences that contain very little change over time are the ones that seem to drag on. Yet, when we are reflecting on our lives, those mundane activities give us very little to remember so our estimates of how much time they actually took up shrink. On the other hand, when we reflect on activities that were new, exciting, and had a lot of change there is a lot to remember, so our estimate of how much time they took up expands. Put another way, the more variance and change an experience contains, the more memory units it earns you. This explains the reason that time seems to pass by so slowly during childhood. Everything is new and exciting. Our brains are busy remembering it all!
I’ve recently experienced this in my own life. My family and I took a mini-vacation to Dallas a few weeks ago. On the way home, I felt grateful that God had allowed time to slow down so that we could truly enjoy the time together. Based on what we’ve discussed so far, the reason time felt as though it slowed down was because we were doing something different, something new. It’s not everyday that we eat in a castle during a jousting match, go swimming, sleep in a hotel, and go to Legoland.
So, what does all of this mean?
Well, as Davachi notes, you are in control of how time passes for you. If you want to feel as though you’ve had more time; as though time has slowed down, you can take steps to purposely create a life filled with memories.
1. Why is today different from other days?
Both Davachi and Vanderkam suggest asking yourself this simple question to help build up more memories to look back on. It’s not that every day will have some huge, exciting activity. Instead, the idea is to purposefully look for ways to make each day a little bit different and to train your brain to pay attention and remember more.
2. Practice mindfulness
Relatedly, practicing mindfulness can help slow time down. The more detailed the memory, the more likely you are to remember it. Start paying closer attention to the details in the moments that you want to remember. Take notice of things like smell, colors, music, lighting, and the faces of the people you’re with.
3. Take the time to remember
To really maximize the impact of the memories that you’re creating, take the time to actually remember them! Unfortunately, we don’t have access to a pensive like Dumbledore. For those of you who are not Harry Potter fans, a pensive is a magical device that allows one to replay and review their memories. In the non-magical world, we can do things like journaling to give us a way to capture moments of our lives. Not only that, having a journal gives us a way to go back and review those moments and relive them, causing time to expand.
The main reason we desire work-life balance is because we want to live a life that is deeply satisfying. Yes, we need resources like time to meet our many responsibilities. But at the end of the day, we want time that is filled with memorable moments. For me, this means that my 90-year-old self can look back on her life and see that it was filled with beautiful memories; that life was rich with experiences of the people and places she loved. Cultivating and curating memories is one way to ensure that happens.
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We spend a great deal of time at work. Like Annie Dillard once said, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” I encourage you to look around your office and see what steps you can take to add simple luxuries to your workday because in the grand scheme of things, they will add up and lead to a luxurious life!