
How can you make subjective time go slower? - panic
http://theoryengine.org/life/tips-for-a-longer-life/
======
plmpsu
"Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time
passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting
range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as
eleven-times-seventeen years."

Catch-22

The full quote is worth your while:

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/496826-dunbar-loved-
shootin...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/496826-dunbar-loved-shooting-
skeet-because-he-hated-every-minute-of)

~~~
j-james
The full book is worth your while.

It's admittedly a long read, but one of the funniest books I've ever read,
chock-full of absurd conversations and timeless satire.

[https://bookshop.org/books/catch-22-9781451626650/9781451626...](https://bookshop.org/books/catch-22-9781451626650/9781451626650)

~~~
shadowprofile77
It is indeed funny at first, and for a long while thereafter. After though, it
descends at first by degrees then quite abruptly into depressing grimness,
revealing the scope of a tragedy that was the case all along, only veiled by
that wonderfully absurd, sometimes black humor.

I love this book like few other novels, partly because it has so much more
impact than a simple comedy would..

~~~
circlefavshape
Indeed. The first time I read that I was actually crying laughing on the train
... and then as the book progresses you realise the depth of the sadness that
was underneath all along.

------
acjohnson55
I used to think that novelty the key to making time go slow, I now think there
is a limit to this. I've had a couple jobs that are absolutely filled with
novelty, where every day is pretty different from the last. At some point, it
becomes a bit of a vortex. I know I've done a lot, but damned if I can
actually remember it at the end of the day.

This also happened to me when spending six weeks backpacking in Europe. At
some point, the novelty itself became routine. Another castle, another hostel,
another view, another language, another transit system. I knew it was time to
head back to home base when I felt like I was losing the capacity to be awed
by things that were objectively awesome. A couple weeks of being stationary
was all it took to get that back a bit.

In order to slow down time, you need not just novelty, but also changes in
real circumstances.

~~~
saruken
I know that feeling exactly. When my wife and I were traveling in the
southwest US, we called it "vista fatigue" \-- There are only so many times
you can be wowed by even the most beathtaking views when there's another one
around the next bend too.

------
vanviegen
The article makes a few interesting points, but fails to make the distinction
between the two modes in which one can assess the slowness of time: in the
moment, and looking back.

Doing something dull, repetitive, routine will seem to take a long time in the
moment. However, looking back it won't leave the impression of a lot of time
having pased, as your brain will compress similar experiences into one.

The article argues for trying to slow down time looking back (which makes
sense to me), but some comments in this thread (bringing up things like
meditation) are talking about slowness it the moment.

~~~
beardbound
I wonder if it’s almost like memory compression. Repetitive data gets
compressed much more easily than unique data. Looking back on boring tasks and
jobs it seems like much shorter amounts of time than long trips even when the
jobs were for years and the trips were for weeks.

These days I try to fill my free time with things I consider substantive.
Projects, long leisurely meals with friends and family, interesting trips,
good books, good food, etc. however at this moment some of those are in short
supply so I’m trying to rekindle old hobbies like writing, tinkering, and
music.

------
llarsson
Plank exercise. A minute or two seem to last forever. Or waiting for a
microwave to heat your food.

Kidding aside, meditation can help, as can just being out in nature without
keeping your mind busy by stressing out with a screen in front of you.

~~~
intrasight
I was going to answer planks too! Whenever anyone complains to me about time
going to fast, I suggest planks :)

~~~
rs23296008n1
I have a similar solution for insomnia. "You haven't run enough miles".

------
01100011
Another vote for novelty. When I met my wife, she was pushing us to do new
things all the time. It seemed like every day we would try a new cafe, a new
restaurant, see a new part of town, explore a new trail... There was a 6 month
period that felt like it could have been years.

Since moving to the valley and getting absorbed in work, we've stopped doing
things. We'll try a new restaurant every week, and maybe go on a day trip
every few months. We're coming up on our two year anniversary of moving here
and frankly I feel like we could just move on and forget the entire chapter of
our life. The last two years feel like 6 months, and that's only because we
got married last year and took a week long honeymoon.

If I look back through my photo album, there is a startling difference in the
number of pictures I've taken too. I've started forcing myself to just take
random pictures now and then just so I don't end up without a record of this
time in my life.

------
dx87
I don't know how true it is, but the reason I've heard that routine makes it
seem like time goes faster is because your brain condenses similar
experiences. If you have a lot of similar days, your brain will interpret them
mostly as the same day, making it feel like you don't know where the time
went.

~~~
dstick
Yup, when you constantly do new things time does seem to last a lot longer!
Great way to make a 6 day holiday feel like 2 weeks!

------
pegasus
Meditation can make subjective time slow down, both in the negative, being
bored way, while struggling to enter absorbtion, but also in the opposite way
- and that, to a degree that is otherwise unimaginable. Almost like stepping
out of time into timelessness.

~~~
throwaway45349
Can you explain more? This is such a foreign concept to me but I'd love to try
and understand.

~~~
dillon
It’s different for everyone and there’s multiple methods to meditation.

To naively summarize, it’s kind of like counting sheep but instead of sheep
you’re counting breaths. You take the time to notice things that you don’t
normally notice. Your chest rising and falling with each breath. What do you
smell. Notice how much force you exert on your seat as you sit, etc etc.

Ironically, if you are bored then meditation is the absolute best way to find
something to do. 10 minutes easily feels like 40 minutes. Your brain will
naturally drift and start prioritizing the most important things you need to
work on. Maybe you’ve been procrastinating and all of a sudden you have an
urge to go deal with that stuff.

After meditating you have a good sense of what you need to do next, which
unfortunately can then make time speed up as you get busy.

------
oh_sigh
Just do new things. Go to new places, talk to new people, try new things. It
can be as simple as not taking the same route to work/grocery store/etc every
time. Mix it up.

Some claim that time feels quicker as you get older because each passing
minute is a smaller and smaller portion of your life(e.g. summer for a 6 year
old is 5% of their life, whereas it is only half a percent of the life of a 50
year old). But I don't buy that.

Time goes quicker as you get older because people get stuck in the same
routine, and it is quite easy to compress memories together when you do the
same thing every day. So, go explore, every day, even if it is just mental
exploration through books or music, and time will surely slow down.

~~~
novaRom
Emigration to completely new environment/society. Another language, people,
culture. Lots of new things to learn.

~~~
manoj-nathwani
I could not agree more!

------
asimjalis
This is why I loved traveling for work. Each week felt different. Time slowed
down compared to a job with the same daily routine.

~~~
non-entity
I would love a job where I got to travel like that, sadly they aren't common
in software.

------
dr_dshiv
An individual's peak alpha frequency can determine whether two closely spaced
flashes of light will be viewed as a single flash. People with faster IPA
(individual Peak Alpha) have a faster frame-rate, a faster sampling frequency
[1].

In principle, one might use TACS (transcranial alternating current
stimulation) or other rhythmic stimuli to entrain IAP and boost one's frame
rate. Present work shows that TACS can lower the frame rate, making people
more likely to fuse flickers than distinguish them [2].

[1]
[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.11.089771v1....](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.11.089771v1.abstract)

[2]
[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.0176...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01765/full?report=reader)

~~~
faeyanpiraat
Or use neuralink

Prediction: Pro gamers will soon need to be divided between normal and
“implant enchanced” categories in leagues

~~~
tolbish
Are there any kind of enhancements that are currently illegal in competitive
gaming, such as banned substances?

------
nestorD
Milton Erickson did some interesting studies on using hypnosis to get
subjective time to go slower for his subject (Time Distortion in Hypnosis: An
Experimental and Clinical Investigation).

The interesting part is that it works and has measurable results. From memory,
subjects that have been made to feel that times goes slower would be able to
count more objects in the same (objective) time.

------
barbs
> _I’m sure you’ve noticed that 2020 has seemed longer than other years. I
> argue this is because of a disruption to so many of our routines._

I would have thought most people would be feeling the opposite. After the
initial disruption, life in lockdown has become a monotonous routine. I find
it strange to be in September already.

~~~
LanceH
I think any current year seems the longest to most people. Just as the current
day does.

------
Waterluvian
Have kids.

Not everyone would make a good parent or want to be one. That’s fine. There’s
so many ways to live a whole life. But for me, becoming a parent made time
simultaneously slow right down and race by.

I’m typing with one thumb as I rock my youngest to sleep so I’ll keep it
short: you do countless things every single week that you probably never would
have done again. And as they grow up those things constantly change. Variety
keeps my weeks feeling absolutely loaded with meaningful segments. But it also
flies by given how fast they grow as people.

Off the top of my head, this weekend only: climbed a playground, ran through a
sprinkler, sidewalk chalk, played Mario 2, made trains from construction
paper, remembered how to draw a star with one stroke. I danced and I sang.

It truly does slow life right down subjectively. I’m cherishing every moment.
I didn’t think it was going to be this fulfilling.

~~~
brokenmachine
Good for you, man.

It's not for me, but it's nice to hear people who actually enjoy it, not just
going through the motions because "that's what people do".

------
User23
I don't think I've experienced boredom in any meaningful quantity since I got
a smartphone. I've often had my doubts about this being a good thing.

~~~
meiraleal
I feel like the opposite. I think internet is more boring every passing day,
so even if I'm doing something (like reading hackernews right now), I'm very,
very bored. But having HN to read I don't engage in a real activity that could
be an interesting physical or social interaction.

------
softwaredoug
Try camping, even with all the work to do, you'll be surprised how
(pleasantly) slow 20 mins can go! :)

------
visarga
I have independently 'discovered' the relation between novelty, the momentary
feeling of time passing and the retrospective feeling of time passed when I
was a teenager.

They go in opposite directions:

\- novelty -> time flies in the moment but seems much expanded when you
remember it

\- boring and repetitive activity -> time seems to crawl in the moment but in
memory it seems to vanish

Another way to increase the subjective feeling of time is to be a parent.

------
mbank
Be somewhere you don't want to be and where it is not much (work) to be done.
Seriously: Few years back, we had the draft in Germany and these were the
longest 9 months of my life. Especially the first 3 (bootcamp style) seemed
never to end: Days felt like weeks! Even though later on the people around
were kind of ok, the time kept dragging on... You often hear the same kind of
story from prisoners. In all seriousness: My time there really got me thinking
especially if I compare it with how fast a year passes by nowadays...

------
Roybot
There is something more to be said for the premium we put on time. We've
adopted apt phrases like time is money. And it tends to be described with
words like priceless, valuable, precious.

The relationship we've created with time makes us want to rush through things
quickly. This is where the "time flies" feeling can come from. It actually
makes us less resourceful and less productive. By placing less of a premium on
time we widen our options in all things - life and work included.

------
codeulike
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronostasis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronostasis)

------
vagab0nd
So the problem with this is that I don't care about how long I have lived, but
how much longer I still have to live. And novelty doesn't change that.

------
cloud_surfer
I wonder if noticing time going by so quickly is an indicator to start doing
less. I think boredom could help with self-reflection about how you're living
life, and really notice what makes you happy/unhappy. Doing smaller lifestyle
correcting could be better than holding it all and having a
mid/quarter/yearly-life crisis.

------
vermilingua
The author spends nearly a quarter of this piece forgetting that not the whole
world shares the same seasons.

------
markhollis
Some days ago I saw a video that suggested that subjective time seems to be
slower when we are younger because our neurons are firing more actively. As we
grow older, they tend to fire less. Anyway, it is just one aspect.

------
holyknight
Good idea, but the whole text could've been summarized in like 2 sentences...

------
Ericson2314
Breaking routine sounds exhausting and unsustainable, a classic individualist
falicy. I feel like getting more sleep and doing fewer stimulants (caffeine)
is the type of advice this audience actually needs.

------
amelius
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies (...) The man who never reads
lives only one.”

― George R.R. Martin

~~~
esperent
"Unless he watches movies or plays games instead, or just has a really good
imagination".

\-- Anonymous internet smartass

------
shannifin
I honestly kinda like time seeming to pass faster... Time going slow tends to
imply a negative experience for me. Faster, faster!

------
dr_dshiv
When I deeply meditate, I can sometimes make subjective time go faster, so
that I can look at clouds and they look time-lapse.

------
m3nu
Inspiring article. Just cancelled the apartment and closed the company to get
some novelty in my life.

------
epicureanideal
I'm not sure how they do it, but somehow this happens as soon as I arrive at
the office!

------
jacquesm
Go sit on a heater. If you want it to speed up: go sit on the sofa with
someone you love.

------
advertising
Easy - hold a plank

------
ecoled_ame
marijuana, living alone, decadence, literature, blocking out light & sound,
passion for your work. time disappears.

~~~
northpondhermit
[https://open.spotify.com/episode/1f5TyjZ1eAYUJgCyOERWn0?si=6...](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1f5TyjZ1eAYUJgCyOERWn0?si=6zHUurg9RmqOFTAKP0DQ7Q)

------
patfla
Sit at home and wait for covid19 to pass.

------
agumonkey
climbers saying:

on a wall, a second is a century

here you go

