How to slow down time

The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass.

— David Eagleman

I think about the passing of time a lot.

And thinking about time often leads to thoughts of mortality, and thoughts of mortality often lead to thoughts about whether or not I’m living a useful life. And thoughts about whether or not I’m living a useful life…

Okay at this point I pause—knowing this brand of introspection once sent me into a crisis of faith—and tell myself I’m doing my best, and then grab a sweet banana from the fruit basket.

I love sweet bananas!

Six sweet bananas later (I naively intended to have only two) the existential thoughts persist.

“THIS IS A SIGN!” my brain tells me.

But must it be a sign?

We (human beings) are slaves to patterns. Our brains, the supercomputers they are, in a bid to simplify our lives and make us more productive—or to just conserve energy—search for patterns everywhere.

Sometimes this is good:

Patterns and routines form habits. If you want to build a habit, building a routine around it eventually causes your brain to accept the new status quo. Especially, if you build fun into the routine. For example, if you want to start journaling in the morning, you can sandwich that desired habit in between two slightly more pleasant routine tasks like listening to music when you wake up and preparing a delicious breakfast to reward yourself after journaling. Repeat this for a while (the science on for how long is unclear) and eventually journaling in the morning will be second nature to you.

But sometimes patterns can be bad:

The Baadermeinhoff phenomenon is the illusion where the increased awareness of something creates the illusion it happens more often. For example, you want to buy a Subaru, so now everywhere you look, you see a Subaru. In reality, there aren’t any more Subarus now than there were before you fell in love with them.

The clustering illusion makes us so desperate for patterns that we make them up. For example, the last 2 times your favorite sports team won the championship, you wore your favorite hat. Now you wear the hat to every game and your favorite hat is now your lucky hat. Now, having a lucky hat is fine; sh*t I have one, too, but the problem comes when you start gambling with your family home as collateral because you have a lucky hat.

Get the point? Patterns sometimes good; sometimes bad.

“Okay, Shem, what do patterns and routines have to do with the passing of time? I don’t have all day!”

Fine, fine, sheesh! Here’s the point: David Eagleman raises a great point I’ve tested and found to be true:

To slow down time, you should break your patterns and routines every now and then. Doing the same thing over and over lulls your pattern-loving brain into autopilot and makes those moments pass by faster.

Conversely, doing new things forces your brain to be more present. Remember the first time you went to the Old Taxi Park? All your senses were on high alert, right? Time definitely slowed down that time.

So mix it up a little: work in a different coffee shop, visit a new restaurant with your friends, try a new cocktail, try a new meal, get a new hobby, learn a new skill, bike instead of running, try out a new style…

To practice what I preach, I’m sending the picture below to my tailor because “Alfie” was serving.

Your move…

Have a good week and may you live a looong life (if you want to).