Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. -Douglas Adams.
So… you want the dull times you don’t enjoy to go quicker, and you want the fun moments to last? You want to clean the house in the blink of an eye, but you’d rather that wonderful hour at the beach lasted all day? Basically, you want to warp time!
Well, let me tell you what I know of time-warping.
The first point here is that we should re-define what you actually want. What you don’t want, is to wake up dead one morning and find that those very precious days of your life have been wasted away, counting down the hours till some interesting {future} event will happen. You know the feeling; ‘if I can just get through these last 2 hours of work, I will go home and put my feet up / enjoy myself / be happier’. This is a projection of how much better you’ll feel in the future, but with complete disregard as to how you feel now. It is the comparison between the future and the present that causes you to feel that the present is unpleasant.
So, how do I time-warp through those tedious tasks without losing precious days of my life?
- Artificially generate enthusiasm for the task at hand {pretend}
- Focus intently on whatever the task is, however menial
- And here is the crux: do not for one moment compare the present moment to the past or the future, do not even think about something else
Somehow, this process results in sending enough positive signals to my easily-fooled brain that I actually start to enjoy what I am doing. So rather than trying to make the time go quicker, I change my perception of time through rearranging my attitude towards the task.
Obviously, if you’ve read ‘The Power of Now‘ by Eckhart Tolle then some of these ideas aren’t new (and yes, I did roll my eyes through much of that book). But, I have applied some of the ideas to my own life, in a slightly different light. Basically, the key is that, in this very moment in time the boredom you feel has nothing to do with the nature of the task, but everything to do with the comparsion you make to a past event or a future possibility.
To prove this, think about the very first time you ever went on a plane. I guarantee, if you remember the experience, it was exciting, and the time, well… it flew. So, how does it feel when you fly now? Is it still just as exciting? No?? Tedious perhaps? Well, there you go. When an activity is brand new, your entire being, all your senses, focus on the experience, and time goes very quickly. Once it is no longer a new experience, you may enjoy it less and less, even to the point of boredom. The very same activity that you thought went so quickly the first time, now seems to take forever. It has everything to do with your perception and attitude towards the task, not the nature of the task itself.
The reason it is possible to warp time is because in the present moment time does not really exist, it is an illusion. Time only exists if you compare it to the past or the future.
And thats all I have to say about that.
Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
