Jo Marchant

seems to go faster i mean there's also a difference between how time appears or how long we feel time is taking in the moment as we're living a moment and then there's also how long we think a period of time was after the event so when we're we're thinking back to our memories but i think in both cases how you're interacting with the world and how much attention you're paying to what's around you and whether you can free yourself

from your assumptions and biases.

And that does help time to go slower.

Just as a side note, there's really nice research on the emotion of awe, A-W-E, when we're just really amazed by something that's just...

vast that surpasses us that's beyond us and your jaw drops and you're just like wow and that seems to be a really effective way of suspending all of those assumptions and the normal ruts and paths that you're thinking normally takes and then time slows down as well and people who experience awe feel as if they have more time.

Yeah, I think for most of human history, we didn't have clocks or any sense of this mathematical clock time.

It was really Newton who came up with that idea.

Most physicists today don't think that that's actually how time works.

So time is more like a...

a kind of bookkeeping device, if you like.

It's a useful mathematical tool that we can use that helps us to coordinate what we're doing with what everyone else is doing.

But it's not something that exists in itself independent of the events.

It just helps us to synchronize with what's going on around us.

There's this phenomenon in psychology called time famine, which people are reporting more and more, which is where the more accurately we try and measure time, the more efficiently we try and use our time, the more we're trying to pack into our schedules every day and deadlines and appointments,

the less time people feel they have.

So this is why it's called time famine.

So we're living longer than ever.

And yet people feel like they haven't got enough time.

They're always rushed, always stressed, trying to get to the next appointment.

And this has real negative effects on people's quality of life.