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As a symbol of detachment, the meaning of Little Gidding is perfected in death, because it is only at some distance in time that one can see what is so difficult to see when involved in the currents of action: that whatever factions we may support and to whatever purpose, our strife must necessarily serve an end beyond the end we may have figured. (172)
Proust viewed involuntary memory as containing the "essence of the past," claiming that it was lacking from voluntary memory. In his novel, he describes an incident where he was eating tea soaked cake, and a childhood memory of eating tea soaked cake with his aunt was "revealed" to him.[2] From this memory, he then proceeded to be reminded of the childhood home he was in, and even the town itself. This becomes a theme throughout In Search of Lost Time, with sensations reminding Proust of previous experiences. He dubbed these "involuntary memories".
The more detailed the memory, the longer the moment seems to last. 'This explains why we think that time speeds up when we grow older,' Eagleman said -- why childhood summers seem to go on forever, while old age slips by while we’re dozing. The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass.
"The reason is you didn't lay down any new footage during the flight," Eagleman wrote. "There was nothing new happening. There were no events and so when you look back on it you can't remember it at all."
A novel experience may feel like it’s flying by, but you’ll have a deeper impression of that time and likely have a bundle of unique memories tied to it that will also give stretch and substance to that time gone by.
The answer lies in how time feels different as you’re experiencing it versus how you remember it. According to researchers Dinah Avni-Babad and Ilana Ritov, routine frees up brainpower instead of fully engaging it with new information. “The automatic nature of the routine leaves attentional resources for monitoring time (the watched pot effect),” they write.
If you’ve ever worked a routine job — or actually watched a pot while waiting for water to boil — you’re intimately familiar with the watched-pot effect, where time seems to unfold at a fraction of the speed of regular time. However, change up that routine and time will seem to move faster. “A watched pot never seems to boil, but go and check your emails and it will be boiling over before you know it,
“Unless people experience major changes that break the routine in their lives and provide them with anchors to retrieve from memory, life can become one short, timeless sequence of routine inaction,“ Avni-Babad and Ritov write.
So, to slow down time and combat the effect of routine, fill your days with new experiences and knowledge to form accessible memory anchors.
The more detailed the memory, the longer the moment seems to last. "This explains why we think that time speeds up when we grow older,"
In other words, when you’re in a life-threatening situation, your brain writes down memory much more densely, and then retrospectively, when you look at that, you have so many details that you don't normally have that it seems as though it must have lasted a very long time.
That's the only interpretation your brain can make. So time, your assessment of how long something took, has a lot to do with how much energy your brain has to burn during the event and how much footage you have of the event.
Time:
slows down in new experience and environments
slows down with increased complexity and increased amounts of information
slows down in states of non-absorption and/or discomfort
slows down when the "conscious mind/ego" is withdrawn (zone experiences, higher consciousness)
slows down in anticipation of duration, positive experience, an event, or frustration
speeds up with age
speeds up with states of absorption
So:
To actively "increase" the perception of time, engage in interesting (awe-inspiring), unfamiliar and difficult activities that have high stimulation/complexity, high energy expenditure, and anticipation (eg. tracking lineal time on a deadline, results).
Now, you do need to have a lot of energy to pack your weekends with different activities, and if you’ve had a hard week at work you may well not yearn for a host of new adventures, but
rather for an empty weekend. A weekend spent at home, reading the papers, tidying up, watching TV and phoning a couple of people will relax you, but it gives rise to few new memories and soon that
weekend will not stand out from any other, making time appear to have gone faster. So there is a trade-off here: do you want to slow time down or spend your spare time restfully?
Here, the question of how subjective time arises is of particular importance. Subjective time and consciousness, felt time, and experience of self are closely related:8 I am my time; through my experience of self I reach a feeling of time. If we have a better understanding of the subjective experience of time, then important aspects of self-consciousness will also have been understood better. Scientific research into extraordinary states of consciousness provides an avenue toward understanding what constitutes consciousness, by way of exploring alterations in the experience of time.
Alongside our attention, our physical state also has an effect on the present experience of time. In situations of increased emotional agitation, it often feels as if time is expanding. If we are very angry or in the terrifying moments of an accident, but also when we experience the greatest happiness, time seems to slow down: the last steps to the top of a mountain after considerable effort and as the panoramic view appears; the moment before the longed-for kiss when it becomes clear that it’s about to happen. These are experiences of the greatest emotional presence: our attention is heightened and the body enters a state of extreme preparedness. For a moment, time almost stands still
n a 2012 article, the Finnish philosopher Valtteri Arstila analyzed accounts of life-threatening accidents and highlighted at least five components that are essential to the phenomenon of altered time consciousness:8
1. The person feels that the duration of events is expanding and the temporal progression of events is slowed down.
2. There is an enhanced mental sharpness and increased speed of thoughts.
3. Those affected act quickly and purposefully.
4. Their attention is focused on aspects of the situation that are essential for survival.
5. Visual and auditory impressions are unusually sharp.
The researchers working with David Eagleman considered this an indication that people do not experience an alteration in time during the terrifying situation, but rather the feeling of time expansion occurs after the event—that is, the interpretation is related to the memory of the event. What an individual experiences in a moment of terror is so exciting and significant that many more details can be remembered afterward. According to Eagleman, this is what leads to the feeling of time expansion. In fact the wealth of events in our memory are related to the felt duration of the experiences. A retrospective judgment of time is based on completely different factors from the prospective judgment of time made about the flow of time that is just being experienced, a judgment in which attention and physical sensation are crucial. The more powerfully experiences are remembered, the longer lasting a past period of time seems to us.
15 The emotional situation of a free fall during a period of just a few seconds seemed in retrospect longer to the test subjects than another person’s fall, which was observed in a relaxed situation from the ground. The memory of one’s own fall is full of emotionally charged thoughts and experiences and accordingly seems longer.
This orientation toward attention led to an even more intense time expansion when watching the horror movie, which elicited the most emotions. This is another powerful indicator that the perception of bodily processes is connected to time consciousness
In this case, if time expands, then it is into a state experienced by the individual as generally pleasant and extremely interesting, comprising all one’s thinking and feeling. Many anecdotal accounts of the powerful expansion of time when consuming hashish can be understood as descriptions of an initially more powerful sensory sensibility, intensity, and density of experience that has an impact on memory. “The memory of the intoxication is surprisingly clear” (p. 118); “colors grow brighter, more luminous; objects more beautiful, or else lumpy and threatening” (p. 117), as Benjamin writes. In this the experiences are intensive enough to create the feeling of time stretching,
Despite an intensified sense of perception, not dissimilar to the effect of cannabis consumption, alcohol reduces the ability to concentrate and thus creates the experience of time passing more quickly.
In laboratory-controlled tasks involving the perception of time, the accelerated processing leads to the normal overestimation of time intervals in the range of seconds. In the case of longer time intervals, such as hours, however, extremely accelerated thinking and perception mean that experiences are not stored in a sustainable way. One has scarcely had one thought before one is already onto the next thought and the next perception. Switching one’s attention at high speed leads in hindsight to less pronounced memory traces—with the effect that the hours experienced are seen in retrospect as shorter, and time passes more quickly. This is comparable with the feeling of a hectic day spent in the office, where one engages in lots of activities, switching quickly between them without going deeply into things. If one looks back at the end of the day, the hours passed extremely quickly, and one wonders what one has achieved today.27 Quite a lot, actually, but nothing given one’s full attention. For this reason fewer memory traces are left behind and the working day has passed quickly.