Time is subjective. I hear about “how fast time flies by” daily, everybody is talking about it. I do see great improvement in my own perception of time in recent years since I implement several simple protocols in my life. Here I want to share these little tricks.
First of all, what is the subjective feeling of time? Scientists are debating, and I describe the main idea in over-simplified words. We register new things in our minds, and each new thing generates a tick of our internal clock. When we are kids, everything is new and our clock ticks all the time, but when we get old we get buried in routine, and our clocks rarely tick. So to make our inner clock tick, we should register new things all the time.
How do we make our clocks tick?
- Learning. Each new profound realization registers in our brain, and we get a great “WOW” moment. In this moment the time stops.
- Getting out of the comfort zone. Trying new things, acquiring new habits, we have a great chance of encountering something surprising and wonderful, that makes us feel like a child in a chocolate factory.
- Empathy. A huge part of our brain is dedicated to other people. It is profoundly important to use it. We can share the joy of or kids, the loss of our parents, the excitement of our friends. Being empathic to others, we have milder feelings which we can easily cope with – much more so than dealing with our own challenges. Having kids allows us to relive childhood – at least partially – and then the time does not fly by.
- Creativity. We can still be kids! Just open up for new possibilities and get blow away with the joy of creation. Many people after learning to visualize report that reading books now is FUN. Visualization skills are not limited to reading – they can be applied to everything we do.
- Mindfulness. Each moment is an eternity of a sort. Getting all the colors around, feeling the wind with the skin, feeling the body, appreciating every nuance of the fine food we eat or the company we are with… Mindfulness is not about meditation, it is about being here and now. Everybody can do that for a short while, very few can do this for a while….
Being a superlearner is all the things above and more. We are creative to learn better, we constantly learn new things, and apply our knowledge to get out of the comfort zone, and then we stop and enjoy the life around us in precious Pomodoro breaks. If you apply everything you learn in the course, the time will not fly by faster and faster, but will fill the sails of your life.
