Steve Taylor
Appearances
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
Time perception is related to information processing, so the more information you process, the slower time goes. And that's why new environments and new experiences usually make time pass more slowly, because you're absorbing more information. All this today on Something You Should Know.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
The topic is what I call time expansion experiences. So these are moments when a normal sense of time slows down drastically. It's almost as if we open a kind of wormhole into a different experience of time. And these experiences often occur in accidents. And I had my own car crashed about 10 years ago in which I had this type of experience.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
So that encouraged me to investigate them as a psychologist.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
Well, maybe I'll tell you a bit about it. I was driving down the motorway, as we call them here in the UK, and it was quite a busy highway. And there was a truck on the inside lane that came out and crashed into my car. So our car started to spin round in the middle of the highway at maybe 60 miles an hour. But immediately, as soon as the truck hit us, everything went into slow motion.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
The cars behind us seemed to almost freeze. And I felt as though I had so much time to try to analyse a situation, to try to work out what to do, to try to take some sort of preventative action. And my perception became very clear and detailed. Everything looked very bright and intense. And I felt this very strange sense of calmness.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
I never expected to feel so calm in a kind of life-threatening situation. But in real time, this experience probably lasted just three or four seconds before we veered towards the left and crashed into a barrier at the side of the road. But in my mind, it was more like 30 seconds, maybe 40 seconds, even longer. So to me, as a psychologist, it kind of exemplified that time is a kind of construct.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
It's something that we create with our minds and there's nothing absolute or fixed about it. It varies according to our state of mind, according to our mood, according to our state of consciousness.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
That's true, but you can actually experience more or less time in eight hours. Eight hours is a very subjective experience. You can talk about this in terms of a whole lifespan. I sometimes use the example of two twins. I think Einstein used this example in relation to relativity and physics. But in relation to psychological time, there could be two twins. Let's say one twin...
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
grows up to be a very conventional person and lives a very normal life, doing the same job for 40 years in the same area. And they live according to a routine and don't have many new experiences. But the other twin goes off travelling around the world, doing lots of different jobs. And maybe they have a lot of time expansion experiences.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
Maybe they take psychedelics or engage in meditation to change their state of consciousness and therefore time expands. But if these two twins, let's imagine that they died on the same day, on the same date. The second twin, who went travelling around the world and had many new experiences and time expansion experiences, they actually live for longer.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
They actually experience a lot more time in their lives than the first person. So that applies to any period of time, whether it's a day or a month or a whole lifetime.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
Well, most human beings, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think most human beings feel oppressed by time. We feel that we don't have enough time. We feel that time is an enemy, that it's always running away from us and speeding up as we get older. But if we know that time is flexible, it's subjective, it's not a fixed, even a real phenomenon, then it changes our attitude towards time.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
We no longer have to be afraid of time or feel that time is our enemy because we have some degree of control over it. And there's nothing really fundamentally real about it.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
To some degree, on the one hand, time perception is related to information processing. So the more information you process, the slower time goes. And that's why new environments and new experiences, you usually make time pass more slowly because you're absorbing more information, because it's all unfamiliar, it's all novel. and fresh to you.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
And that's normally why time seems to move more quickly as we get older. Because as we get older, there are fewer new experiences. Our lives tend to become more repetitious and full of routine. But we don't necessarily have to allow that to happen. We can bring in new experience into our lives. If you keep changing your life in some way,
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
And if you keep, say, exposing yourself to new environments by traveling, new information by being curious, you keep challenging yourself, you know, taking in new experiences and new information, then time doesn't necessarily go more quickly. So to a degree, it depends on what you do with your life.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
That's true, but how you actually experience a second can be different. A second to a person who's very bored is longer than it is to a person who's absorbed in an activity. A second to a person in an accident can be much, much longer than a second to a person who's sitting at home watching TV. So it's all about subjective perception. I mean, in time expansion experiences,
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
People may only experience, say, five seconds of clock time, but in their mind, in their subjective experience, they actually go through maybe one minute of subjective time and they're actually able to do things which would only be possible in a minute of normal time. There are so many time expansion experiences from accidents and emergencies where people report being able to
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
go through a really complex series of thoughts and actions, which would be impossible if time had been running at a normal speed. For example, I did a survey recently of 300 people who'd had time expansion experiences, not just in accidents, but also under the influence of psychedelics or in meditation or in sports, for example. And
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
Well, more than three quarters of people were sure that their time expansion experience allowed them to do things that would be impossible in a normal passage of time. So in that sense, time really does expand. It really does move more slowly to these people.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
There's a whole category of negative experiences in which time goes very slowly, whether it's boredom or whether it's a waiting situation or whether you're in pain or whether you're anticipating pain when you're in some kind of discomfort. That almost always makes time pass very, very slowly. And I think that's because in these situations, we can't focus our attention.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
You know, we can't get absorbed in any kind of activity or entertainment.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
and therefore we're in this kind of very open state of awareness in which our minds become very busy our minds start to worry start to think about the future start to envision lots of scenarios start to think about the past so our minds get very kind of agitated and very very busy so in other words they get full of information massive amount of thoughts pass through our consciousness
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
And all of this information passing through our consciousness stretches time. So if you compare that to, let's say you're waiting to go on holiday at the airport. So you're in a good frame of mind, looking forward to your holiday. Maybe you're reading a book in the waiting lounge at the airport. And time can go quite quickly in that situation because you're in a state of absorption.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
You're relaxed and you're focusing on a magazine or a book. Maybe you're talking to your partner. So when you're at the dentist or when you're waiting for a doctor's appointment, or maybe you've been waiting for a long time for a bus or a train and you're getting quite agitated, time passes very slowly because your mind gets very agitated and full of information.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
Yeah, well, it's actually to do with absorption, again, because when you watch a really good movie, you forget about everything. You forget about your life. You even forget who you are because you're so absorbed in the film. Everything kind of drops away and you become completely absorbed in the story or the characters of the film. So that kind of intense absorption makes time pass really quickly.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
But if a film isn't very good, and if you don't believe the characters, if the story's not very enthralling, then you can't really get into absorption. And again, your mind gets a bit busy. You start to think about other things. You start to think, hmm, what should I do tomorrow? Or what happened yesterday? What happened at work today?
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
So again, your mind gets full of information again, which stretches time. In a way, you can judge how good a film is by how quickly it seems to pass.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
Yeah, that's a very common experience. In my view, that's due to familiarity. Because when you travel to a place for the first time, the journey is fresh. You're looking at everything for the first time. But even when you come back, even if you're just traveling back a few hours later, it's already slightly familiar to you. You've done the journey before.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
So you're processing less information the second time you do the journey. It's kind of interesting because I once did a survey at an airport where I interviewed people who'd returned from their holidays. And people often said that the first week of the holiday went really slowly, but the second week went really quickly.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
And that's just because of familiarity, because after a week, the environment's already slightly familiar to you. You're already settling into a routine. And therefore, the mixed time passed more quickly.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
It's also to do with awareness of time. You know, when we're aware of time and when we focus on the concept of time and we're thinking about, hmm, when are they going to get there? How long is this going to take? That awareness of time actually makes time pass more slowly. Compared to when you forget about time, then time seems to go quickly.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
Well, I've collected hundreds of examples of time expansion experiences in my research, and I found that about 50% of them come from accidents and emergencies, but about 10% of them come from sports people. Some sports people report that in their highest moments, in their moments of peak performance, time seems to slow down.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
And they seem to have more time to position themselves, to respond to their opponent's actions. And they often report that because time was moving so slowly, they were capable of astounding feats. And it was these feats which enabled them to win competitions or to break records. My theory is that the most elite sports people, the best athletes in the world, have this ability to slow down time.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
And there are many reports from athletes speaking about this. Do you remember the baseball player Ted Williams? He said that he felt that he had a slowed down experience of time, which gave him more time to see the ball as it was hurtling towards him. He said that he could even see the seam on the ball. He could see the stitches on the ball as it flew towards him.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
you know lionel messi the soccer player he has the same ability i think the reason why most people say he's he was or is the best soccer player in the world is because he has this amazing ability to slow down time something i heard i don't know if you have ever looked into this but and i don't even know if it's true but i like the fact that it might be true is that one of the reasons
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
That's true. I think that's a very true aphorism because animals have a different metabolism, a different kind of consciousness to human beings. And I believe that they do experience time in a different way. Usually the rule is that the smaller an animal, the slower its sense of time is.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
So there are insects who may only live for a few days or maybe a few weeks in human time, but in terms of their metabolism or their consciousness, they actually experience what would be to human beings a whole lifespan. So it kind of illustrates my main point, which is that time is totally flexible and subjective.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
The human experience of time is totally different to an insect's experience of time. But also, the experience of time that human beings have in different situations or different states of consciousness can be completely different to other situations or states of consciousness.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
It's not an uncommon experience. It usually happens when a person is close to death, for example, during a fall. Maybe a mountaineer falls off the side of a mountain, and in the few seconds that it takes before he hits the ground, then he has a life review.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
And that means that he or she experiences, sometimes literally every experience of their life is experienced again in a matter of few seconds, right from birth through their childhood, through their teenage years, right to the present moment. It all flashes before their eyes.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
And also when people actually are clinically dead for a short time in what's called a near-death experience, in those, again, usually that's just for a few seconds or maybe a few minutes. In that short period of time before they are revived or resuscitated, they may have this life with you. So sometimes it is literally every experience of their life which flashes before their eyes.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
And it's not just a question of memory because people who have these experiences, they say that they actually relive these experiences. Don't just remember them, they actually relive them. They recall them in very intense perceptual detail. They even notice things from the events which were not apparent at the time.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
They sometimes see the events from different perspectives from what they experienced at the time. Sometimes, occasionally, they just see a number of salient or significant events from their lives.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
But, you know, it's completely paradoxical, kind of a complete mystery, really, how a whole lifetime of experiences can be recalled or relived in a matter of a few seconds or maybe a few minutes at the most. That does seem impossible, doesn't it? It does seem impossible. There are some neurological explanations to try to account for the life review, but they don't really make sense.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
If you look into them deeply, they're quite flawed. I personally think the only way to make sense of these experiences is to think of time in a different way. I like to think of time as a spatial phenomenon. This fits with Einstein's theory of relativity. It fits with some theories from quantum physics. So the basic idea is that time is not linear.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
We experience time in a linear way as a kind of arrow that moves towards the future. The past disappears when we enter the present, and then we move towards the future. That's our normal experience of time, like an arrow heading into the future. But I think in reality, at the kind of fundamental level, time is actually spatial.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
It's all kind of laid out in a panorama so that in some sense the past still exists and the future already exists. So you can actually re-experience the past in certain states of consciousness because it's still there. And maybe in certain states of consciousness you can glimpse into the future because it's already there.
Something You Should Know
How to Change What’s Not Working & Why Time Seems to Speed Up and Slow Down
And as I say, it sounds completely counterintuitive, but it does fit with some theories from physics. It's really the only way to make sense of a phenomenon like the life review.