Do you wish that you could stretch time?
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If you do — and who doesn’t sometimes — here’s an article that might well be of interest to you. It’s from the February 2006 edition of New Scientist and is available here on their web site.
It’s based on experiments in the perception of time, carried about by a variety of scholars, and the experiences of people in meditation, as well as the well-known concept of being “in the zone” — that place where you become so focused on what you are doing that time no longer seems to pass at anything like its normal pace.
Here, as a taster, is the conclusion:
Meanwhile, for anyone looking to adjust their pace of life, the results of Wearden’s Armageddon experiments raise something of a dilemma. You can stretch your perception of time, but only if you’re prepared to spend it in the equivalent of a waiting room. Perhaps the best option is to just accept the hectic pace of modern life, but make a serious effort to spend at least some of your time doing nothing much.
That might sound like common sense. But according to social psychologist Robert Levine of California State University in Fresno, it is common sense that’s well worth remembering. “Time is our most valuable possession,” he says. “Until the biomedical people can make us live forever, the closest thing we have is to stretch the moment.”
Time is much more important that we think it is, if only because it is a truly non-renewal resource. We cannot change the rate at which it passes, but we can use it more wisely — and alter our perception of its progress.
Technorati Tags: perception of time, being “in the zone”, hectic pace of modern life, stretch the moment, adjust the pace of life
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Comments
Thanks for the comment, Eric. It’s great to get actual experience like this to back up an article.
I think it’s extremely easy to become obsessed with always knowing the time, just as some people become obsessed with speaking on their cell phones or “texting,” so they can be “in touch” every minute. Neither obsession is necessary or healthy.
Keep reading, my friend.
I read the full article and this reminds me of a brilliant recent edition of the Presidents Weekly Radio Address from The Onion, it is a weekly parody of the real thing and in this edition, the President talks about past times, present times and future times, in a way that only President Bush can!
The link is: http://weeklyradioaddress.com/WRA20080105.htm
Thanks for the article. It helps explain something I ran into by accident. I have been tinkering with my car radio and right now, it’s out of the car. The car radio had a clock in it, so now, I don’t have a clock to keep glancing at while driving.
My son asked it I was annoyed to not have a clock. My answer was “quite the contrary, it’s very freeing to have it gone. I now drive the speed I want to, rather than trying to meet some artificial deadline.”
Since then, I also quite wearing a watch. I still make it to work on time and keep my appointments.
If I really want to know the time, there are plenty of clocks around. I just don’t need to “always” know the time…
My advice, if you want to alter your time sense, you first have to remove anything that would contradict it.
~Eric