Episode 1028: How You Perceive Time

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1028 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Roger Whitney: Hey, I'm Roger Whitney. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having the ability to work for your future as a key, having the ability to work for.

[00:00:27] Having the ability of pause second, having the ability to work for your future is key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader,

[00:00:42] Scott Maderer: the truth is all of these things. Are affecting our perception of time. Even age affects our perception of time in part, because when you ask for a year for a 13 year old, that's a 13th of their life, but when you're 30 or 40 or 50, it's a much [00:01:00] longer, it's a different duration. It's a smaller fraction.

[00:01:04] Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:30] And today's episode about developing your influence by starting your time. I talk with you about how our brains perceive time. I explain why it's important to recognize that time is one thing and our perception of it is another. And I also talk about why understanding how others perceive time can help you build influence as we talk about stewarding your time.

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[00:02:21] When it comes to time, there is a reality of time, but there's also our perception of time and these are really two different things. So I want to talk a little bit about how. Perceive time. The first thing I wanted to talk about is I found a post, which had an interesting thought experiment in it. And I wanted to share it with you.

[00:02:50] What happens if let's say we could invent a machine and that as. Cranked up the dial on the machine, the number of thoughts you [00:03:00] would have would go up incrementally. In other words, if I turn the machine up one notch, your thinking would speed up by a factor of two and then another notch would speed it up and double it again and then double it again and then double it again and then double it again.

[00:03:16] In theory, at some point, if you could turn this machine up enough. You would be perceiving time so much faster than it really is that it would feel like you were living an eternity, even in a. And there are basically science fiction stories that talk about this kind of perception of time. Now, obviously they're not real events, but it is interesting to think about the fact that time actually passing versus how we perceive that time in terms of our subjective perception of it are very different.

[00:03:59] And we really [00:04:00] don't actually understand how we understand time passing. We don't really know that much about it, but we have some models, some theories, some ideas, and some research around it. Some people think that it has to do with our memory and the strength of that memory. Or how that memory is formed.

[00:04:21] It also has to do maybe with the contextual information that is stored in that memory. Another words, the perception of time is much more about how our brain works. The time itself. As part of that too, we know that there's different parts of the brain that are involved in this. And there are also some things that you can do that affect our perception of time in a very real way.

[00:04:46] There are some temporal illusions, just the same way. Optical illusions. There are ways that we can trick our brain into feeling like time is going faster or slower than it [00:05:00] really is going. So for instance, we have a tendency as human beings to think of a short interval as being long while a long interval is being short.

[00:05:11] And what I mean by that is if you ask someone to wait for a minute, That feels like a really long time. But then when you've been in an event for an hour, that can feel like a very short amount of time. There's a perceptual difference. In the length of time, we have a tendency to think of things that are brighter, more intense, more at a large volume as lasting longer than some.

[00:05:38] With less intensity or less power behind it. We also judge events and the time that they last as longer, if you increase the amount of time between the two events, an example of that is if you're traveling cross country and then you take a break and rest in between two [00:06:00] legs of the journey, you will feel like the legs of the journey took longer.

[00:06:04] Proportional to how long you take the break or the rest, the longer the rest is the longer. It feels like the rest of the journey took, even though the truth is each leg still took the same amount of time, regardless of the time that you rest. There's also what we call the oddball effect. This is that perception that you get of time slowing down when you're under a lot of stress or a accident or something like that happens.

[00:06:31] That threatens you. And you are having that fear effect. You often feel like, and remember a time dilation is if time slowed down, we don't really know if that's your perception of time or your perception of the memory of the event that causes it. But we know that it's really. Even your emotions can affect the perception of time.

[00:06:55] If you watch something that's more scary or intense, it feels [00:07:00] longer than if you watch something that is more pleasant. Time appears to go slower when you're doing something that feels threatening in a way, or feels scary in a way, or feels emotionally intense in a way, which obviously feels counterintuitive because we think about the fact that when we're bored and when nothing's going on, that's when it feels like time goes forever.

[00:07:28] But the truth is they are what's happening. Is. Since there's nothing to engage your brain. Your brain is constantly looking around for something to think about something, to do something, to focus on. And it's that actual sensory processing time that feels like time is passing. It adds more information, which feels like that must have taken longer.

[00:07:50] And you even have gaps in that, which also create a feeling of length. So the truth is all of these things [00:08:00] are affecting our perception of time. Even age affects our perception of time in part, because when you ask for a year for 13 years, That's a 13th of their life, but when you're 30 or 40 or 50, it's a much longer, it's a different duration.

[00:08:16] It's a smaller fraction. It begins to feel like a shorter amount of time because comparatively it is all of these affect our perception of time. Why is that important when it comes to influence? Recognize if you perceive time differently. So do other people. So when you're looking for ways to build influence, to build connection, to build a relationship, you need to recognize that what you're doing affects other people's perception of time as well in a percepts how they see the events.

[00:08:53] In fact, one of the reasons I deliberately kept these podcast episodes relatively short is because [00:09:00] I like the idea of having a short, intense time touch, but not having a long drawn out conversation as a way of being influential. It feels more authentic as well. So think about what you're doing and how you structure it and how it affects other people's perception of time and of the event when you're thinking about what you're doing to build influence.

[00:09:27] Thanks for listening.

[00:09:29] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively. But act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired [00:10:00] stewardship.com/time or texting 4 4, 2, 2, 2.

[00:10:04] Time tips, and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.