I recently mentioned to a colleague outside my team that I will be leaving the company in December. He was shocked and remarked, “ It just feels like you started here recently. How long has it been? 3 years already? Time flies fast eh!!!”
We talked a bit about how my current role would be managed by the team moving forward and some of the challenges that would come with it.
As the conversation moved towards what my future holds, he looked off the screen and paused for a moment. It felt like he was having a sudden moment of reflection.
He continued, “3 years of your time here you say. I have worked in this company for the last 10 years and It felt like I was always busy doing something or the other. Zooming out to even the last 20 years of my corporate life, my resume will say that I have essentially done the same type of work for different projects for different companies.”
“It’s like eating the same vanilla ice-cream but each few years you get excited to move to a new brand of vanilla ice-cream or add a new topping but it is still vanilla ice-cream”
“Time flies by swiftly and I don’t think I can slow it down. Every reflection ends in regret and I just have to bite my teeth towards the end”.
What my colleague refers to here is called the Proportional Theory of Time Perception.
The theory suggests time feels faster as we age because each year becomes a smaller fraction of our total life lived, making it seem shorter, like a year to a 10-year-old versus a 50-year-old.
When we are young, we are exposed to numerous new experiences and upgrades. Every year in school introduces a new subject or a new level to master. Choices expand in terms of which stream to pursue for our future career. We learn new emotions when studying away from family, forming new bonds in college and learning to settle in away from your roots.
But as we progress through adulthood, these novelties are slowly replaced by routines. Wake up, eat breakfast, sit in meetings, clock off work, spend some time with family and back to bed.
You might probably remember every detail of the route you took on the first day you starting learning to drive a car. But once you are well-versed in driving and take a well travelled route, you arrive even without remembering the drive.
When an experience becomes a routine, our brain stops to record it. Everything is just a blur.
So in theory, the easiest solution to slow down time is to seek novelty.
Learning a new skill, travelling to a new place, starting your own business - all of this can help in your brain moving away from the autopilot mode and slow down time.
But in reality, all of this feels like a far fetched dream. Every individual has many reasons why seeking novel experiences does not fit their circumstances. For ex. not everyone wants to leave a stable paycheck and move towards finding their own company. Some might be financially stable enough to start a new company but simply do not want to, or do not know where to start.
This made me wonder if there is a form of novelty where the barrier to entry is minimal. Not novelty that requires a resignation letter, a big investment, or a dramatic life overhaul. But something quieter.
I got my answer in the unlikely of places during my recent vacation to Paris. We were craving for Indian food and decided to go straight to Gare du Nord so we could have endless south Indian restaurants to choose from.
We went to Sangeetha restaurant and when we were about to finish our meal, the owner, Mr. Ferthouse asked if we enjoyed our meal and enquired where we come from.
We slowly continued our conversation on some common interests, my future plans and also of my wife’s plan to start a cookie business.
Without a moment of hesitation, he picked up his phone and started searching his contacts. He shared the contact of his friend who is in a similar line of work and offered some advice on how he could be of help to our project.
A few moments later, he was enthusiastically showing pictures of his recent visit to the Cannes Film Festival. It happens that he had produced a short film directed by one of his former employees and the movie was screened during the festival.
This sparked my curiosity. Film production feels like a tangent to the restaurant business. “Is this a new venture you are pursuing?”, I asked.
With a calm smile he responded, “ My son has decided he does not want to come to this line of work and is happy with his means. There is no point in me investing my time and resources in the restaurant business to make it bigger.”
“Now I invest my time and resources to enable the dreams of other people. I don’t expect anything in return but it brings so much joy to myself”
And I think this is a place where we could all start with.
You don’t need to change your own status quo to experience novelty in life.
You just need to see how your skills or resources can be of use to others. When I discuss about building an online course with some of my friends, most of them genuinely want to be a part of the journey in any way they could help.
That enthusiasm is not about the course itself but a path where they are momentarily stepping into a new story, a new set of possibilities, a new future that is still being written. And that is novelty.
Ferthouse’s life had variety not because his work changed drastically, but because the people he chose to invest in did.
This kind of novelty compounds.
Today it’s helping a friend with a side project. Tomorrow it’s mentoring someone informally. One day, it’s funding or producing a dream you deeply believe in.
So if life feels like it’s speeding up, but you cannot afford to stop your routine, ask, “Whose journey can I meaningfully contribute to with what I already know?”
Reach out to them, without any expectation.
Maybe the easiest way to slow time is to stop living only inside your own story.
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