There is a saying that goes something like, “When you’re young you have time and energy but no money, in mid-life you have money and energy but no time, and in later life, you have time and money, but no energy.” Maybe we are having the time of our life now, but many of us feel that we are time-poor, with too much to do and not enough time, both at work and in our personal lives. We look back at old photos and see we’ve grown older and that our children or younger family members have transformed into young adults, in what seems like no time at all.
We have no sense, like taste or touch, to measure time. Although we think of time as the steady ticking of a clock, our experience of time is more elastic and depends on how focussed we are on what we are doing. Time seems to slow down when we’re engaged in something new, something scary like paragliding, or when we’re focussed on the detail of an activity, like listening closely to a piece of music.
When we intentionally open our awareness and focus our attention, our brains process more information about our experience. When we’re not aware and focussed, our brains tend to label and filter the world around us as familiar and “already known”. This makes sense from a processing perspective; why spend energy processing the same things we come across every day? Although this mode is useful, it also means that we sometimes miss out on a richer experience of life. For instance, our brain may notice “flowers” in the vase we walk past and then quickly move on. The difference when we walk past with awareness is that we’re more likely to notice and appreciate the beauty of the vivid purple tulip petals and enjoy their subtle fragrance. This mode is about experiencing the world in a more direct and connected way, rather than indirectly when we skim over the surface of the world around us.
For tens of thousands of years, our ancestors measured time during the day by following the movement of the sun across the sky, which connected them to the broader reality of life on Earth. We’ve only had standardised time for around 180 years, since the industrial revolution and the use of railways. Although people had clocks and watches before then, actual clock time varied across the country. Today we’re surrounded by time information on our computers and smartphones and conditioned to clock time that has little to do with noticing the sun. One surprising development is that in our digital world people are now growing up without knowing how to tell the time from an analogue clock face.
Different cultures relate to time in quite distinct ways. Researchers found that the pace of life tends to be faster in industrial economies, with large populations and cooler climates. Not surprisingly, in countries like the US and Northern Europe, work tends to be full-on, fast-paced, and challenges our work-life balance. At the other extreme, African Bushmen work six hours a day for two to three days a week.
When we’re mindful, our awareness rests in the flowing moment of experience. The previous moment is now in the past and, apart from what gets stored in memory, is out of reach. The next moment, which we sometimes anticipate, is flowing towards us and has yet to arise.
It’s only ever now, even when we replay yesterday’s news on TV. When researchers explored mind-wandering they discovered that we drift into automatic thoughts, mulling over the past, anticipating the future, or commenting on our present experience 48% of the time. By being more aware of mind-wandering and bringing our attention back to the present, we’re less likely to get drawn into negative or worrying thoughts about the past or future, or judgements about the present, that no longer serve us.
Sometimes it’s useful to scan across the surface of things. Mindful awareness gives us the choice to switch between, the often less aware, top-down skimming and a more aware and rich experience from the bottom-up, depending on what we’re doing.
Time is one of the key measures of our lives; it marks our age and structures our behaviour over each day. Although we’re relatively affluent compared with our recent ancestors, we find ourselves time-poor in many areas of our lives. By practising mindfulness, maybe we can make better use of the time we have and even slow down, or speed up how we experience time itself.
Suggested weekly practice
- Notice the relativity of time by exploring how time flows in different ways depending on what you are doing during the day.
- If time seems to be passing very slowly and you’re feeling a little bit low, send your attention outwards and see if time speeds up and your mood improves.
- Explore the perceptual difference between top-down skimming and bottom-up awareness. For instance, the difference between looking superficially and really looking.
Guidance
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.
- Play the first settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
- Then play the second practice to explore the different modes of direct, bottom-up and detailed experience and indirect, top-down and more superficial experience. You’ll also explore how you perceive time passing.
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