I Want to Time Travel
By Serena Wagner
We have all heard the saying “time flies when you’re having fun!” So, does time go significantly slower when we are not? When people are bored, they often use the expression “this is like watching paint dry.” I have personally experienced this at work. When we are super busy a seven hour shift can feel like one, and if it is slow, that seven hour shift can feel like an eternity. What causes this perception of time? Does time really go by faster when we are busy?
How the brain perceives time depends on its expectations, meaning the brain can represent the probability that something is going to occur, given that it has not happened yet. Shaw mentions in her book, The Memory Illusion, that the more aroused or excited we are the faster time seems to pass. But, what is it about pleasant experiences that makes time seem to go by faster? An experiment was done by Gable & Pool where they found that participants perceived time as passing faster in a high-approach-motivation positive state. That means a situation in which a person expects something positive to occur; like meeting friends out for a long overdue dinner. This is akin to the idea that time flies during fun experiences we anticipate. In the study, participants with a low-approach-motivation positive state or a neutral state, meaning they were not particularly excited or positive about the experience, .saw time as passing more slowly.
A window into brain function sheds additional light onto the time perception story. Researchers found that a set of neurons that releases dopamine impacts how the brain perceives time. In other words, when you are having fun, these cells are more active and release a lot of dopamine resulting in the brain judging that less time has passed than it actually has. When you are not having fun, these cells do not release as much dopamine, and time seems to slow down. If you think about it, when we are alone and have nothing to do, we will usually keep checking the time to see if it’s almost dinner yet, or if it is time for our next scheduled task. Sometimes, we find ourselves lost in our own thoughts. When we are out with friends, we’re not paying attention to the time or anything else going on except the here and now, and until it’s time to leave, you don’t really realize how much time has passed because you’re not focused on it. So, how can we do better in other situations?
When you’re bored or doing something you’d rather not be doing, your mind is not occupied and it tends to wander. Those boring days you look back on that seemed to drag at the time, appear to have occurred more quickly than you’d expect. One thing that can keep you distracted from time is to set goals. Maybe there’s a project you’ve been wanting to do for a while, or a new book you haven’t gotten to yet. When we are engaged in our surroundings and are motivated, time is not an issue. Really, the solution to making time go by “quicker” is to find things to look forward to, find a task to enjoy, switch up routines, and even put on music. The clock doesn’t go faster or slower regardless, it just all depends on how you perceive it.
The next time you are bored, remind yourself that you cannot control the clock, but you can control what you do with all that extra time you have.
References
Gable, P. A., & Poole, B. D. (2012). Time Flies When You’re Having Approach-Motivated Fun. Psychological Science, 23(8), 879-886. doi:10.1177/0956797611435817
Saplakoglu, Y. (2019, March 02). Why Does Time Fly When You're Having Fun? LiveScience. https://www.livescience.com/64901-time-fly-having-fun.html
Shaw, J. (2016). The Memory Illusion. London, Great Britain: Random House Books.
Why Does Time Fly When You're Having Fun? (2014). Wonderopolis. https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/why-does-time-fly-when-youre-having-fun