Time Slipping Through Your Fingers? 4 Effective Ways To Slow It Down!
Can you remember the last time you had to complete a task urgently? Time just flew away, didn’t it? Conversely, when you were on vacation, seeing and processing new things, did it feel like time was surprisingly slowing down? This is exactly what neuroscientist David Eagleman describes — “Time is this rubbery thing. It stretches out when you really turn your brain resources on, and when you say, ‘Oh, I got this, everything is as expected,’ it shrinks up.”
Because of the pandemic, we are all so caught up in doing the same things over and over that it’s difficult to process that more than a year has gone by whooshing across our eyes. While we may not be able to add more hours in a day, there’s an opportunity for us to manipulate our perception of time. Brustask brings to you 4 easy ways to do the same.
1. Add novel experiences to your routine
Researchers have found that when our attention shifts to something novel, time appears to tick more slowly. Think of the opposite effect. An average adult wakes up at the same time, goes to the office or starts working at the same time, eats at the same diner, and works on the same thing every day. The brain doesn’t have to process any new information or remember any specifics because it’s the same thing being repeated over and over. Before you know it, a year or even ten years have passed by, and is 2021 already going to end in a few months?
To slow down time, introduce novel experiences to your routine. It doesn’t have to be going out on a vacation every week or having expensive meals every day. It could be something simple as taking a salsa class after work, trying a new coffee shop, cooking a new meal every few days, or exploring a different part of your neighborhood.
2. Practice mindfulness
When was the last time you were engaged in just one activity? You must be thinking about your pending report as you’re going through this article or eating your dinner while replying to emails. Multitasking has become a way of life even though we know it’s bad for us.
Mindfulness helps us notice the little things we miss out on. Like feeling the warmth of the sun as you walk to your home or noticing the little change in your neighborhood. When we are more present, time slows down. Mindfulness is often associated with sitting in silence for hours. But it could be as simple as taking a few minutes of your time every day to practice meditation or a mindfulness technique that activates your sense organs and grounds you into the present.
3. Make meaningful progress with your to-do list
Years can pass by really fast when you’re not making any meaningful progress with your life. The key is to remove this inaction from your life. One way to do it is by breaking your projects into small, actionable goals that you can cross off on your to-do list. For example, if you’re planning to learn a new language, break this learning into different levels and put an estimate on how much progress you’ll need to make every day. By achieving these milestones, you’ll remember the progress you made in a year or in a month. Time will not seem to be flying away because you didn’t take any action.
To make simple and effective to-do lists, hop on to Brutask, as task management tool that will help you prioritize your tasks, manage your time by timeboxing each task and help you be more productive.
4. Pay close attention and journal your days
Pay close attention to the way new leaves pop up on the plants you have in your balcony or the way sunlight changes in your room through the course of the day. Noticing these small things in your environment can help your form new memories in your usual routine and puts a pause on time ticking away.
On the other hand, journaling pushes you to slow down and reflect on your day or on your life. It could be something simple as making a gratitude list or letting your thoughts flow about the project you’re working on or the progress you’ve made or the new things you discovered today.
How is time passing for you these days? Have you found any tricks to slow down the subjective perception of time or to spend time more thoughtfully? Let us know in the comments.
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