There’s a famous quote that goes something like this: most of us live 20 years of life and then we live one year again and again for the next 80 years.
If you could experience the next five years like you did college or childhood, how much happier or more exciting could it be? Or even how much longer would that time feel looking back? A counterargument is that we don’t have enough novel experiences after early 20s as we ease into the rest of our lives. And that’s a big fat lie, especially because everything you experience is novel if you haven’t experienced it before (!?). How could you convince yourself or even trick yourself back into that headspace? It isn’t about experiencing novel things but rather experiencing things novelly.
Everyone only has 24 hours in a day. You can’t waste time before you use it. How this time is used is fundamentally what makes certain people different from others. For me some days seem to have infinite hours, and others whiz by. So the subjectivity of time isn’t just different between humans; it’s different within them too.
How do we stretch the very thing we deem constant -- at least, numerically speaking? This isn’t about making every minute last longer. We already know how to do that. Just hold a plank or wait in line at the DMV, nobody wants more of either. It’s also not about ‘cram your day to be much more productive and stop having fun’ but rather about time that feels full when you’re in it and richer when you look back. That means stretching the parts worth stretching and letting the rest compress. Here’s how I try:
Ten minutes is a lot of fucking time, like a lot. To check this yourself, set a ten minute timer and scroll X, Instagram or YouTube. Repeat while holding a side clamshell plank. I bet you didn’t do either, but the point still stands. The simplest way is to identify what makes you feel like time is forever versus what makes time fly. And to reduce time shrinkers and add time elongators accordingly.
Don’t watch shows over a long period of time. Anyone who knows me knows I love TV, but I prefer it as a choice and not a default result of browsing. I watch maybe one or two good shows a year through a week-long binge. It’s a bender but satisfies the itch for a very very long time.
Week long/day long/hackathon style sprints. It’s hard not to focus when you’re only doing one thing. This is way more efficient than one hour a day of X for Y days. This works for all sorts of things. Start and finish a painting or book in one go instead of half-assing for half an hour every other day. Doing this also makes sub-decisions during the sprint easier -- is ABC helping me do X? Yes or no? Move on. Starting the week with this sets the tone for everything after it.
This is also how my social style has evolved naturally. All my favorite people and I got close through friendship benders, simply described as one to three full-day hangouts. I can count 10 plus friends with whom I’ve had a bender as one of our first five encounters. Also works romantically, I met my boyfriend through a three day bender. Even though time is technically flying when you’re having fun with people, you have now compressed months’ worth of relationship growth into a shorter period of time. To clarify, none of this involves substances or alcohol, and really really does work. It genuinely surprises me that more people don’t do this.
Most people who feel like they’ve experienced a ‘lot of time’ in a short amount of years relate it to college and school, where there’s a definite start and finish as opposed to work where it’s pretty much infinite. I’m convinced that experiencing time as longer needs markers to remind you that it is passing. Literal changing of seasons helps with this.
Doing anything with time limits creates a micro-season that works the same way a full season does with a set start and end. I once one-shot a 2000 word essay on paper because I set a time limit to finish it. This article was written like that and then edited while transcribing. It can help to prepare for this ‘generation’ period using a good prompt, carefully curated input, thinking in themes and reading in themes to supplement ideas and questions before actually beginning the task.
It also might be possible to use your subconscious to do things when your conscious mind thinks about them enough. Richard Hamming talks about this in The Art of Doing Science and Engineering. If dreams reflect your waking experiences, then by immersing your consciousness in a certain idea you would get your subconscious to think it through when you’re asleep. In other words, you could literally dream your way through things.
Thanks to Andy Matuschak, Rishabh Anand and Andrew Wu for reading drafts.