The Power of Time Perception
The Power of Time Perception
Control the Speed of Time to Slow Down Aging, Live a Long Life, and Make Every Second Count
Jean Paul A. Zogby
Time Lighthouse Publishing,
London, New York, Dubai
Copyright © 2017 by Jean Paul Zogby
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN 978-0-9957347-9-1
Time Lighthouse Publishing
Southwell Gardens, London, U.K.
Printed in the United Kingdom. First Printing, 2017
For information about special discounts available for bulk purchases, sales promotions, fund-raising and educational needs, contact Jean Paul Zogby at [email protected]
To Mom, for all your sacrifices and infinite love.
To Dad, for making me who I am. How I wish you were here.
To my wife and love of my life Roula, I am so lucky to share my life and love with you.
To my children Stephanie, Chloe, and Anthony, you provide me with a constant source of joy and pride.
You will inherit the world and make it a much better place.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
How Do We Think About Time?
More Precious Than Gold
The Value of Time: Work and Leisure
Wasted Time?
Time & Culture
The Pace of Life
Part One
How Do We Experience Time?
Chapter 1
The Psychology of Time Perception
Our Sense of Time
The Illusive “Now”
Space and Time: Perceiving the Past and Future
Half of the World Disappeared
Time Estimation: Prospective vs. Retrospective
Recap
Chapter 2
How Do Our Brains Perceive Reality?
The Real Purpose of Our Brain
We Do Not “See” What is Real
How Our Brains Lag Behind Reality
Neurotransmitters: The Brain’s Messengers
Brainwaves: The Brain’s Electricity
Recap
Chapter 3
Time – The Ultimate Illusion
Our Brain’s Video Camera
The Speed of Time
How Long Is a Mental Snapshot?
Measuring Mental Snapshots With Flickering Lights
How Our Brains Create Mental Snapshots
The Wagon Wheel Illusion
Our Attention: Blinking or Continuous?
Chapter 4
Time Distortions
An Accidental Discovery
The Brain’s Ticking Clock
The Internal Clock Model
Harnessing the Power of Our Internal Clock
Part Two
What Factors Influence Our Time Experience?
Chapter 5
Living in the Moment
Attention to Time
Distraction From Time
Slowing Down Time With Mindfulness
Speeding up Time: The Power of Distraction
Experiencing “Flow”: A State of Consciousness
Encouraging “Flow”: Motivation, Goals, and Challenges
Creating a Sense of “Flow” at Work and at Home
Recap
Chapter 6
Time in Slow Motion
The Timing of Amazing Athletes
The Alertness Spectrum
The Oddball Effect
Music, Alertness, and the Speed of Time
Extreme Alertness: Experiencing “Bullet Time”
Fight or Flight: It Is Wired Into Our Brains
Boosting Alertness With Sleep and Exercise
Diet for an Alert Brain
Recap
Chapter 7
Taking Control
Classifying Emotions
How Emotions Affect Time Perception
The Effect of Taking Control
When you Feel Fear
When you are Angry
When You Are Sad
When You Are Anxious
Who Do You Spend Time With?
When You Feel Awe
Recap
Chapter 8
What Kind of Person Are You?
The Speed of Thought
Introvert or Extrovert?
How Quickly Do You Get Bored?
Night Owl or Morning Lark?
Impulsive or Self-Controlled?
Trait Anxiety: How Often Do You Worry?
Recap
Chapter 9
Messing with Time
Intellectual Rave Club
Slowing Down Time With Stimulants
Smart Drugs and Mind Expanders
Time and Mental Disorders
It’s All in Your Eyes
Recap
Part Three
How Do We Perceive the Past and the Future?
Chapter 10
A Time to Remember
Tin Box Memories
Locating the Past
Remembered Durations
Maintaining Memories: Novelty and Routine
Stretching the Past
Time Distortions: Contrasting Present Time with the Past
The Holiday Paradox
Chapter 11
Mental Time Travel
Time Travel?
Time Distortions Created by Anticipation
Time and Expectations
The Optimistic Future
Fantasies and Positive Expectations
The Planning Fallacy
Recap
Chapter 12
Time Slipping Away
Those were the Days
Routine and Living in the Past
Fading Memories
An Aging Brain
Squeezing Out More Time
Recap
Part Four
How to Make Every Second Count?
Chapter 13
Crafting the Longest Year of Your Life
Living in the Moment
Live Long and Prosper
Collecting Memorable Moments
Improving Our Attention and Memory
Building Anticipation
Time is not Money
Resisting Time Pressure
Inducing Feelings of Awe
Epilogue
What’s Next?
Without Whom
Index
References
About the Author
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Preface
It was late spring and the last day of school was finally upon us. I was probably around eight years old and, like any school boy at that age, I eagerly awaited the start of the summer holiday. That school year, like every other, seemed like it would never end. Those last few minutes of the last class seemed to take an eternity. The slow crawling clock hanging on the wall had surely been placed there just to taunt us! Time always seemed to drag when I was waiting for something nice to happen. But then the bell of salvation finally rang and summer break began. Three months of sunny days, fun, and adventures.
Do you remember how your childhood summers never seemed to end? For me, it was like an eternity. I grew up in a house situated at the edge of a village in the beautiful Mount Lebanon, overlooking a dense forest of very tall pine and oak trees. We would spend the summers playing in flowery fields, climbing rocks and trees, creeping inside foxhole caves, and following nearby creeks before their streams dried out in the blazing summer sun. The day’s adventures would start in early morning and go on until sunset, interrupted only by my mother's call for lunch. By the end of each day, morning seemed like a distant memory. And so the summer days extended on and on so that by the time we were back at school we practically had to learn how to read and write all over again!
Fast-forward 40 years to the present day and I am, again, eagerly awaiting my summer break. This year, like most recent years, flew by, and I am hoping for a nice long vacation. But two weeks on a beach resort are over in a flash. I return to work, to my daily and weekly routine. The days are spent in the office, a couple of evenings at the gym, a night out with some friends, and another for a family dinner. Before I know it, the week is over and it is time to start all over again. The weeks and months fly by, with each year feeling shorter.
Our perception of the speed of time has always intrigued me. Physics tell us that time progresses at the same rate, but that is not how it feels. Time seems to speed up as we grow older. We find ourselves saying things like: “How is it nearly Christmas again?” “Has it really been already four years since the last Football World Cup?” There are, of course, many things other than age that affect our perception of time. Why does time fly when we are having fun and why does it drag when we are bored? Why does time seem to stand still during a car crash?
For a long time, the nagging question in my mind has been: is there a way to slow time to the speed it ran at when we were young? This book is about the psychology of time and how we subjectively perceive time, rather than how it is defined by physicists. It is about what seems to speed it up or slow it down, and the things we can do to extend a moment of bliss or shorten a moment of pain. It is about making a vacation last longer, or looking back at a week or year and being satisfied that it was time well spent. It is also about the limited time we spend on this rock that is floating in space. It is about the few decades that make up our life, and how limited and precious they are. The ultimate purpose of this book is to make you aware of your own time, so you can ‘live’ longer.
I was driven to write this book in my early 20s, following the passing of my father to a long fight with cancer. With a family history of cancer, I thought my turn might come sooner rather than later. Having grown up during the 16-year Lebanese Civil War, I was all the more mindful of death. I was among the fortunate ones, but I experienced the horror of seeing some of our closest friends perish. I felt an urge to do something with the limited time I have.
I knew that medical science had advanced life expectancy at phenomenal speeds—the average life span for the cavemen was around 26 years; in 1850, life expectancy was around 44 years; it is currently 71 years, and is projected to jump to 150 years by 2100! But obviously I cannot wait for that—I want to slow down time now. As the great professor Richard Dawkins writes, “After sleeping through a hundred million centuries, we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades, we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?” 1
I have spent the last six years researching the subject of time perception and interviewing neuroscientists in order to understand how we perceive time and what we can do to slow it down. I have found some fascinating and bizarre experiments that scientists have undertaken to understand time and how we perceive it. These range from putting rats on cocaine, heating the brain to unbearable temperatures, pushing students from high platforms, and confronting them with scary spiders! Through this book, you will explore ways to control your perception of how time flows, ways to use it more efficiently, and how to avoid a sense of frustration or doom that it is running out.
It is natural to feel threatened by or helpless towards that which we cannot control. But if we learn how to control our sense of time, it will no longer be our enemy. My hope is that by the end of this book, you will have the knowledge to, in the words of the great poet Rudyard Kipling, “fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.” After all, we only live once and the least we can do is attempt to make every second count.
Introduction
How Do We Think About Time?
One life—a little gleam of Time between two Eternities.
― Thomas Carlyle
More Precious Than Gold
What comes to mind when we think about time? Why is it so precious and why do we seek ways to ‘make the most of it’?
Let us go back to ancient China in 4,000 BC where the first clocks were invented. In order to demonstrate the idea of time to students, Chinese priests would dangle a rope from the temple ceiling, using knots to represent the hours. They would light it with a flame from the bottom to indicate the passage of time.
Many temples burnt down in those days.
The priests were obviously not too happy about that. So a water bucket method was invented. Holes were punched in the bottom of a large bucket of water, with markings to represent the hours, and water would flow at a constant rate. The students would measure time by how fast the bucket drained. It was much safer than burning ropes, but more importantly, it taught the students that once time was gone, it could never be recovered.
Of course no one uses water clocks anymore. But the fact that time will eventually run out remains ever true. Time is our most precious possession because, as with the burning rope or water clock, once it is consumed it cannot be replenished. You can always work more hours to earn more money but you cannot do anything to gain more time. Unlike money that can be saved in a bank, or gold that be hidden in a treasure box, time cannot be saved. We have no choice but to spend every moment of it—and every moment that is spent is a moment that is gone forever.
So it seems entirely irrational that we are willing to spend our time making money, but are reluctant to spend our money enjoying our time. We look for the best bargains and think twice before spending money, but often fail to do the same with time. “Wasting” a couple of hours is not as bad as losing a couple of hundred dollars, even though time is far more precious than money. We have the tendency to spend time as if it costs us nothing and this is made worse when you consider that time has an additional “opportunity cost” attached to it. You can divide your money between various things, like clothes, a new car, or a fancy dinner, but when you spend time on a certain activity, you effectively give up the opportunity to spend it on other things. Any benefit that might have been derived, had you chosen to do anything else, would be lost forever.
Time is also priceless because it is truly a miracle that we are here. The odds that we are alive at this moment in time are one in a billion zillion. Think about that. There was only one chance in all the history of this universe that you would have been able to exist, and here you are. If for any reason your father and mother, or any of your grandparents, did not meet at exactly the right time, and at ex
actly the right place, you would not be here. If any of your ancestors, having gone through wars, famines, and pestilences, did not survive, you would not be here. The odds are astronomically stacked against your existence, but you won the lottery of life. Only you do not know that you won and the prize value in the time given to you is kept hidden. You spend from that credit line without knowing the remaining balance. You realize that whatever you spend cannot be replenished and that lottery of life can only be won once, never twice.
The Value of Time: Work and Leisure
Inventions and technological achievements of the past 100 years were all made for the purpose of providing more leisure time. Cars and planes were invented to make shorten travel. The computer was developed to make work easier. Phones were devised to make communication faster.
Years ago, people thought that in the future there would be nothing to do. The 19th century British economist John Maynard Keynes imagined that in 1930 “our grandchildren would work around three hours a day.” In his day, technology had already reduced working hours and so he believed the trend would continue. In fact, according to recent statistics, Americans work 12 hours less each week than they did 40 years ago, and it is even less in Europe.
The main problem for social scientists to tackle seemed to be: what can people do with all that free time? It obviously cannot be placed in a “Time Bank” for future consumption, nor can it be passed on to our children. But free time did not turn out to be a problem after all. Nowadays, people are busier than ever. Time scarcity has increased, especially in the corporate world, and particularly among working parents. It turns out that the problem is less about how much free time we have and more about how we perceive that time. During the Industrial Revolution, when clocks were used to measure labor, the value of time was associated with money. And so the more valuable we perceived our time to be, the less eager we were to “waste it” on leisure, and the scarcer it seemed.
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