Time is an Illusion: the project

Hacking time with novelty and nostalgia

The concept of time has always intrigued me. Like how it’s “fixed” but our perception of it is so fluid. Or how it’s just another variable to measure existence, dimensionally speaking.

Moving faster as we age. Moving slower in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, but faster during a hang-out with our friends. Feeling longer in the dream world, yet feeling so much shorter when in the movie theater.

My gripe with time in general is I never feel like I have enough. Need to work out? Not enough time. Need to create? Not enough time. Want to live my dream life? Not enough lifetimes.

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"I decided to pretend that time doesn't exist 
Now everything's lost its meaning 
There are no goals 
There are no deadlines 
There are no schedules 
There are no special dates 
There is no structure 
There is no late, no early 
There is no yesterday, no tomorrow 
There is nothing left but the present moment 
And my awareness of it 
How much of my suffering was all because of time?"

Timeless, from The Box written by (me)Lavendula

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As much as I love reading about how time is perceived from a 4th dimension perspective and beyond, I’m coming to terms with the fact that in this human experience time is fixed and there’s nothing we can ever do to “actually” change it. However, I also understand how powerful our human brains are with carrying the ability to perceive time differently than it may have happened.

"We are prisoners of the present, locked in eternal transition between our past and our future"

― Neil deGrasse Tyson

Time is not just a number on a clock. Or even just a measurement of the space between x and y moments. It’s a whole other dimension. One that's malleable. 

We can’t see it. We can’t buy more of it, or sell off our excess. But thinking of it like putty, we can stretch it or compact it. Well, our perception of it at least. 

This feels like a nod towards the idea that we control our reality, or at least some major parts of it. 

This great grey matter of mine might hold the key to the happiness I’ve been searching for. I have financial goals that require me to thug out my current job for about 2-3 more years (shorter if I allow space for miracles). Having to swallow that pill has been one of the hardest things for me lately. Anytime I think about it I shrink a little. I start praying and looking into all the Neville Goddard, Abraham Hicks, and Joe Dispenza content I can find just to escape it (which goes against the energy of manifestation in itself, but I digress). I’m tired of the miserable days piling up. I’m tired of fighting to escape my reality. I’ve tried radical acceptance before, but this time I have a new perspective.

“We are so free that we can choose bondage.”

― Abraham Hicks

Now how does this tie into the concept of time? There are some days I can’t stomach working this job another week, let alone another 2 to 3 years. My 1 year anniversary at the job came up in April and shook me. It felt like it had only been a few quick months. But if you were to zoom into each day, each weekend, you’d hear me say “I don’t know if I can do this for even a year, let alone 3”. The second I realized it had been a year, the sinking feeling of life just passing me by immediately followed.

joepease

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Now hold up, during the days and weeks, time dragged. Now the 1 year mark comes and I suddenly feel like it couldn’t have been that long and that time moved past me?

I’m thinking it’s time I play along with this tendency of our minds to perceive time in different ways. A little mind magic.🔮✨️

joepease

A post shared by @joepease

More of Joe Pease’s work can be found here.

I want to play with slowing down time outside of work and speeding up time at work. Right now my reality is the opposite. It feels like work takes up my entire day, and that evenings and weekends fly by before I can even breathe. This. Is. Miserable. A little mind magic couldn’t hurt. If all fails, at least I’ll be working on a fun project that might distract me.

I haven’t looked into any studies but after consuming so much online about this, obsessively listening to one of my favorite YouTube channels Startalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson, and reflecting on many personal scenarios, I have a much better understanding of how our brains perceive time in different situations.

In summary, it’s all about the experience. Was there novelty, nostalgia, routine, fear, boredom? That all impacts how time is perceived, both in the moment and later when reflecting on the moment.

What expands time vs condenses it? How is memory involved?

⏳️Expanding time: novelty, nostalgia, fear, boredom

The more information we have to process, the slower time is perceived. This could be good or bad and involves anything from the visual surroundings of a new place to the information presented in a lecture.

⏰️Condensing time: routine, familiarity

The more familiar or routine something is, the faster time appears to move. When something is familiar or routine, our brains can rely on the neural shortcuts it created and doesn’t need to spend as much time interpreting all the details.

Like taking the same route home. After a while, you can complete the full drive while dissociated because your brain is so used to it that it no longer requires deep processing of street names, traffic lights, etc. Whereas going to visit a new place, regardless of how long it actually takes, will be perceived to have taken far longer due to the amount of new information your brain has to take in. Where to turn? How many more miles? Which lane? etc.

🤔💭Memory changes how we perceive time too.

Waiting 30 minutes in the doctor’s office feels like it took forever (because of the boredom), but when you look back there’s not a memorable moment that you can recall more than 2 minutes of. It was relatively short and insignificant compared to the rest of your day, week, month, etc. In this example, when the end of August is nearing and fall season is approaching, you likely wouldn’t think about how much time you wasted in the doctor’s office. You will however have memories of the new food spot you tried 2 months ago that was no more than a 30-minute experience. It might’ve taken the same amount of time you spent waiting at the doctor’s office but contained far more memorable moments to recall later, therefore giving the illusion that you spent much longer getting food.

This is where it all sort of conflicts with the idea that time speeds up when you’re having fun. The hangout with friends at a new restaurant might have felt like it flew by in the moment (maybe, maybe not), but when looking back you’re able to recall what feels like hours worth of moments. The drive there, the conversations had while waiting for food. The reviews you all had about the food. The car concert on the drive back. The novelty of trying a new restaurant combined with the nostalgic feeling of recalling events makes that relatively short restaurant visit feel like a significant amount of time during the summer when reflecting.

From a more grim perspective, anyone who’s ever had a panic attack would say it felt like it lasted hours when it was probably about 5 to 20 minutes max. In the thick of it, you can’t help but take in all the details that make you feel like you’re dying, and that stretches the perception of time a lot both in the moment of the attack and the memory of it.

So it’s not just how you feel in the moment that impacts the perception of time, but also the memories it leaves.

Now that I think about it, it feels like the malleability of time is more about manipulating emotion than anything.

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All very interesting. So how can I apply this to my job and my life?

Shrink my perception of time at work. Expand my perception of time outside of work. Lessen the memory of working moments. Increase the memories of life outside of work.

A little alchemy is all. 🪄🧠

“I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.”

― Golda Meir

I’m thinking when I want to expand time, I can tap into my senses to read and collect as much information about the moment to stretch the container of time (what can I see, hear, taste, smell, etc). Or introduce more novelty in my life after work like visiting a new place or simply finding a different trail to walk. Watch a new show. Wear a new outfit. Practice deep breathing and mindfully take in as many of the nice moments as I can. 

And with contracting time I can do this by listening to familiar music and podcasts with familiar voices while at work and not watching the clock.

So that’s the plan for now.

Readers, do you have any recommendations? What do you do to manipulate time?

Part 2 of this project coming soon!