When we’re younger, days seem longer, weeks are extended, and summers are a long  vacation; but as we get older, the days speed by, weeks blur, and summers never seem long enough.  What happens to us – what drives the perception of time to go faster?  I’ve pondered this for awhile, and while I haven’t come to any solid conclusions, I have an inkling it may have something to do with consciousness.  It’s a spectrum, and on either side of the extreme is a zone where the passing of time goes mainly unnoticed.

My work day morning routine is practiced and executed with near perfection each day.  The hardest part is getting myself out from under my warm covers.  Once I’m up, face rinsed with water to wash away the sleepy haze, the rest of what it takes to get myself presentable to the world is easy.  Facial lotion rubbed in, facial powder/concealer patted on, eyeliner drawn, mascara applied, blush blended in, lips glossed.  There’s sometimes a hiccup at the next point in the process – the second hardest part – when I scan my closet in indecision of what to wear for the day.  After some trial and error, I grab my purse, slip on my heels, lock the door, and walk to my car.  Two stop lights, a right turn, and a stint on the freeway later, I’m sitting at my desk going through emails.  The next time I look at the clock, it’s 3 PM.

We spend so much of our time unconsciously going through the same motions, that our brain goes on autopilot and we’re only vaguely aware of what we’re actually doing, much less how much time has gone by.  It’s not a bad thing necessarily.  Our brains have developed the capability to simplify, memorizing patterns so that regular tasks and interactions are more and more efficient as we go through our lives.  Think about it: how many times have you quipped a “Good, how are you?” response when passing by a co-worker?  At the same time, a quarter of your thought process is still thinking about that weird dream you had, another is wondering how you should handle the next phase of your project.  The auto-pilot mode of the brain allows us to multitask on other thoughts or activities while still performing the familiar actions.  Sometimes you realize a few seconds afterwards that your response didn’t exactly match in response to what the co-worker said. Perhaps he had said, “Morning, have a good one!”  Perhaps 6 hours, days have passed by, never to return.

When I begin a new, interesting project, I’m fully engaged.  If someone wearing a gorilla suit walked by and did a chest pound, I probably wouldn’t notice.  Much more realistically, if someone started talking to me, perhaps I would register that a sound was being made, but the processing would end there.  My attention is already operating at near full capacity, one thought lingering and leading to another, unable to take in much external stimulation.  Hours may go by, but unless there’s an immediate threat to my well-being, I’m in oblivion.  Musicians get lost in jam sessions, artists paint until sunrise, and sports fans gather around the TV for the big game of the season.  These are moments of pure focus, when the person is so completely fixated that they ignore everything else that doesn’t relate to their source of attention.

So in what state and situations are we more conscious of the passing of time?  Rationally, the answer is the zone in between the extremes.  This can manifest in many different forms.  The common theme is detached observation, where there is awareness and learning but without high engagement.  Sometimes it happens in a classroom, a meeting, or any period of time where there’s nothing of significant interest happening.  Note that I don’t mean daydreaming or simply not paying attention.  Perhaps it could be called boredom, but the situation is not familiar enough to lapse into auto-pilot mode.  This happens more in childhood up to early adulthood because these are phases of your life when you’re still observing, learning from new experiences and figuring out how you react to them.  Some of those experiences are exciting in addition to being newer – such as playing a new game or learning how to swim – and those moments pass by quickly. It’s different for the mundane activities in life, such as getting ready for school, sitting through class, completing homework for the day, eating dinner, being at home with the family, exchanging small talk with a stranger.  These activities happen enough to uninteresting; but there are more constant and significant changes in physical and mental development during stages of childhood to early adulthood, combined with perhaps not enough repetition to be able to go through the motions unconsciously.  After early adulthood, the development pace slows down a little and a lot more repetition has occurred across a broader set of experiences.  Auto-pilot mode starts being used more frequently in more situations as we age and become increasingly set in our ways.  Eventually, we get to the point where we’re in auto-pilot mode for the situations that aren’t of high interest or enjoyment and full engagement for those that are.

If I were to choose which spectrum I would like to spend more of my time in, it would undoubtedly be the latter.  This is where the adage of “do what you love” comes from.  When you’re doing what you love, there’s a greater part of your life in a more active state of mind.  And because you love what you do, you’re more likely to continuing exploring and pushing yourself outside of the auto-pilot mode.  My guess is that the majority of the population ends up in the auto-pilot spectrum, falling into a career path they’re not passionate about and staying because they don’t know what else to do or because it’s convenient.  There’s a quote that says that “what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  Maybe if there were more people who have come alive, there would be more progress made in different areas across the world.  However, one thing remains the same.  Time, as always, waits for no one.

There are also two types of people: those who start things easily but have a hard time finishing, and those who have a hard time starting, but finish easily.  Which one are you?

I’m the latter, and with most things, perhaps with the exception of sleeping and eating, I approach beginnings carefully, with deliberation, and sometimes with a touch of procrastination.  Depending on the situation, it either pushes me far or hinders my progress.  In solving a complicated problem, the time I take to contemplate and plan out my next steps is often extremely beneficial.  For tasks (especially if mundane and repetitive) that drain my energy, the accompanying dread only worsens the procrastination.

It’s really unfortunate that there are a whole lot of those mundane, repetitive tasks.  Not only in day to day activities such as maintaining clean living quarters, but also in what I do for a living.  It’s so easy to keep on doing what you’re already doing rather than start a beginning.

In beginning this blog, there were moments of excitement mixed in with procrastination. Excitement won clearly, but it took some time.  The hardest part for me is over, and as long as I keep on sitting down in my comfy chair, laptop on lap and a drink on the side table, I can look forward to sharing my uncoveries (thoughts, revelations, perceptions, whatever you’d like to call them) with those who care to keep on reading.  To moving on from a beginning…