Speed up Time

While time can’t actually speed up, your perception of time can. The brain perceives time differently in different situations. Oftentimes the stimuli that shifts our perception are external, such as our environment, while others are our own response to activities and how we process new information. When we’re engaged and anticipating the next immediate activity, time seems to speed up. When we are acutely aware of how we’re spending our time, however, such as on a long flight or waiting for the doctor, time seems to slow down. There are a number of strategies to make our perception of time speed up, including altering one’s environment, relaxing, and keeping the brain occupied.

Steps

Altering Your Environment

  1. Warm up the room. Changing your body temperature can alter your perception of time. Raising your temperature can make time seem to go faster, while lowering your temperature can make time go slower. Crank up the temperature in a room so that you get hot and you may find time slipping by more quickly.[1], [2]
  2. Make your room smell like baby powder. Certain smells may help you perceive time differently. Smells like baby powder change your perception by making time seem to go more quickly. The smell of coffee can often make time seem like it’s going more slowly.[3]
    • Sprinkle baby powder on your skin or onto a cloth and take a big sniff.
  3. Cover up all the clocks in your house. Looking at the time will only make you more aware of how slowly time is passing. Cover up every clock in your house so that you can’t constantly check the time.
  4. Go through sensory deprivation. Depriving someone of some of their senses, such as being placed in an isolation chamber that eliminates light and sound, may compress how they sense the passage of time. Time will seem to speed up, despite the conditions being unpleasant.[4]
    • Many cities have isolation tank and float tank centers. Search online for one near you.

Relaxing Your Body and Mind

  1. Go to sleep. Sleep is one of the best ways to make time fly by. Lie down in your bed and breathe deeply. Relax your body and mind, releasing tension from your muscles. Let your mind wander and you will likely soon fall asleep.
  2. Take a bath or shower. Fill up the tub with warm water and climb in. Having a bath can relax your body and will also take you away from the clock. Spend time washing your hair and body.
  3. Try hypnosis. Being hypnotized puts you in an extremely calm, relaxed state; it has multiple potential health benefits.[5] Hypnosis can also alter your perception of time, making it seem that time passes more quickly than what you might perceive.[6],[1] To hypnotize yourself:[7]
    • Sit or lie down in a comfortable position.
    • Relax your body by releasing tension from your muscles.
    • Visualize yourself walking down a tall staircase. When you get to the bottom, begin giving yourself cues. Say these in the present tense and keep them positive. You might say, “I am calm and relaxed,” or “I am healthy and energetic.”
    • Visualize yourself walking back up the staircase. When you reach the top, tell yourself to wake up.
  4. Consume a depressant. Depressants, which decrease mental function and physical ability for a period of time, also seem to cause your perception of time to speed up. Consuming alcohol or cannabis can create a perception that time is moving faster than it really is.[4]
    • Make sure you are legally consuming depressants. If you are underage or you live in a region that prohibits the use of certain depressants, try a different tactic to speed up time.

Entertaining Yourself

  1. Listen to music. Load up a new playlist and listen to some music. You can either just sit and listen to the music, or you can play the music in the background to accompany you while you do another task. New music is considered enjoyable and makes time seem to speed up.[8]
  2. Watch TV. Turning on the TV can help you stop thinking so closely about the time. Allow yourself to become absorbed in the storyline of a TV show.
    • Binge-watching an entire season of a TV series is a great way to pass the time. You can watch episode after episode through a service like Netflix or Hulu; if the show is good, you’ll get more invested in the storyline and time will fly by.
  3. Play a video game. Video games offer compelling narratives that can suck you into their worlds. If you are playing a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, you will interact with others online, taking your attention away from clock-watching.
  4. Read a book. Find a good, juicy story or revisit an old favorite novel. It helps if the book is not too difficult to read; if you have to process a lot of what you’re reading or constantly look up vocabulary, then you might lose your momentum to get lost in the story.
  5. Watch a movie. Choose a movie with lots of action or comedy. A fast-paced plot with good acting and an easy-to-follow storyline will help the time feel like it’s going more quickly. If the movie has a sequel, move on to that movie to keep passing the time.
    • A slow-paced drama might feel like it’s dragging, especially if you’re already conscious of how slowly time is passing.
  6. Work on a big project. Dive into a project with multiple parts. This will engage your attention with various steps and instructions. A good project could be working on a model, painting a picture or building some shelves for your living room.

Doing Mental Exercises

  1. Break time into smaller increments. When you have an hour to kill, this can seem like a long time. But if you break that down into smaller increments, such as four segments of 15 minutes each, this doesn’t seem as long. Try breaking down the hour into even smaller segments, such as 5 or 10 minute segments. Mentally cross off each segment as it passes.
  2. Mentally catalog things in your house. In your mind, take inventory of everything you have in your kitchen, or try to recall all of the movies you own. Giving yourself a mental task redirects your thought patterns away from concentrating on time to concentrating on something else.
  3. Mentally rearrange your living room furniture. In your mind, try out different ways of arranging furniture, wall hangings, and other decorations in a room in your house. Think of other ways you can make your living space more appealing, such as imagining different colored wall paint.
  4. Do mental calculations. Give yourself some math problems, such as calculating how many days you’ve been alive, for example. Forcing your brain to focus on a difficult mental task can make you less aware of how much time is passing.
  5. Make mental lists. Use your mind to list things, such as naming things you’re thankful for, listing the names of every street you’ve lived on, or naming people who graduated from high school with you.
    • You can also make mental to-do lists, itemizing tasks that you need to complete.
  6. Plan out a vacation. Think about a place that you’d like to travel to and plan out a trip. Think about how you’d get there, what you’d do while you’re there, what kinds of souvenirs you might like to buy, what kinds of meals you’d like to eat, and who you could travel with.
  7. Fantasize about someone you’re attracted to. Think about your spouse, a celebrity or another person to whom you’re attracted, and imagine yourself being with that person. Imagine the conversation you would have, what you’d talk about, where you’d go on a date, and what else you might do together.
  8. Imagine different scenarios for people that you observe. Look at the people around you and imagine crazy, funny lives for them. Give them different jobs or secret identities. Imagine where they go after work or school, their friends or family, and their hobbies.

Trying Other Methods

  1. Do a familiar activity or routine. When you are engaged in brand-new activities, you are engaged with learning and forming new memories. Doing something familiar, such as your daily routine of getting ready for work, will shift your perception of time so that it feels like time is passing more quickly. This is because your brain isn't working hard to process and remember new details. Instead, it overlooks familiar details.[9]
    • On the other hand, if you are doing something new like taking a new bus to work, the opposite occurs whereby time seems to go more slowly because you’re learning and processing new information.
  2. Stay away from things that scare you. Fear is an emotion that tends to stretch out your perception of time. This is because your brain will pay attention to every detail in an attempt to get yourself out of a fear-inducing situation (similar to the fight-or-flight response). By staying away from frightening things, you can help stave off time slowing down.
    • Even scary movies have been shown to slow a person’s perception of time.[10], [11]
  3. Increase your dopamine levels. Dopamine is a chemical in your brain that initiates feelings of happiness, motivation and pleasure. Having lower levels of dopamine can contribute to depression, malaise, and inability to focus.[12] Low dopamine levels also make time seem to slow down, tricking our internal clock.[13] In order to speed up time, increase your dopamine levels by:[14]
    • Eating foods rich in tyrosine, including bananas, almonds, avocados, and pumpkin seeds.
    • Reducing your sugar intake
    • Reducing your caffeine intake
    • Taking magnesium supplements. Low levels of magnesium can decrease dopamine levels.

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/06/10-ways-our-minds-warp-time.php
  2. ↑ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7597195
  3. ↑ http://www.esquire.com/features/impossible/self-improvements-guide/how-to-manipulate-time-0810
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 http://www.exactlywhatistime.com/temporal-illusions/
  5. ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/hypnosis-health-benefits_n_5523210.html
  6. ↑ http://1800succeed.com/faq.html
  7. ↑ http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/self-hypnosis.html
  8. ↑ http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/how-music-hijacks-our-perception-of-time
  9. ↑ http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/15/time-warped-claudia-hammond/
  10. ↑ http://brainblogger.com/2013/04/04/the-brains-stopwatch-emotions-and-time-perception/
  11. ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/extreme-fear/201102/controlling-the-flow-time
  12. ↑ https://www.integrativepsychiatry.net/dopamine.html
  13. ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jan/01/psychology-time-perception-awareness-research
  14. ↑ http://www.naturalhealthadvisory.com/daily/depression-and-anxiety/8-natural-dopamine-boosters-to-overcome-depression/

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