Speed of life
Why do some people find it hard to adjust to the apparent increase of speed in so many areas in life?
Sociologists and psychologists can help us understand our perception of time – and how different people have differing views.1
1. Technical advances give us higher expectations
Hartmut Rosa, a German sociologist, describes how progress may not always save us time as we’d expect.2
It’s far quicker to send a text message or email than to send a letter. But that speed could encourage us to send more messages – and that can give us the impression of being overly busy. We might expect to receive an answer far more quickly than for “snail mail”. That could cause us stress and possibly make us feel that other people are slowing us down.
Sometimes being more efficient in some areas of your everyday life by using so-called labor-saving devices like dishwashers and vacuum cleaners may actually lead you to doing more. When it’s so quick, why not clean the house three times a week rather than once (then feel as though we’re “always” cleaning)?
Advances in transport mean that no-one thinks twice about commuting an hour to work. We forget that our grandparents wouldn’t have considered making such a journey every day, nor would they have suffered the stress of traffic jams, delayed trains and unexplained hold-ups.
2. The more choices we have, the more things we haven’t done
Developments in technology and transport can give us a fantastic range of ways to spend our spare time.
When it comes to planning an evening, it used to be simple. Stay in and watch TV or go to a movie. Now if we stay home, we can watch a film on many devices. If we go out, we can choose a multiplex, an arthouse cinema, even a film club. Then where should we eat, and what style of food?
For our holidays, we can choose to go anywhere in the world. Generally speaking, our only restrictions are money and time. The idea of a bucket list of the places we “must” see emphasizes that many of us feel we need to prioritize.
Whatever we decide, according to Hartmut Rosa, we’re always aware of what we choose NOT to do. There are far more potential options than realizable options.3 That can make us feel time is scarce and that we’re missing out on everything we rejected.
3. There are different ways to see time
Robert Levine, American psychologist, has identified that there are three types of time perception.4
Clock time people stick to times carefully because they know when their next appointment is due. For these people, lunch is taken by the clock, from perhaps 1:00 – 1:30 p.m., and then they go to their next engagement.
Event time people are more likely to suggest that lunch takes as long as it takes. They arrive when they’re ready and leave when they’re done. These two types can drive each other mad with their different views – as anyone who’s ever organized a party knows.
There’s a third type too – mainly found in the most remote places in the world. People who live by “nature time,” set by the progress of the sun and the changing of the seasons, are the most likely to suggest meeting “when the cows come home.”
4. Different cultures view time in different ways
Levine also theorizes on different cultures’ view of time. He investigated how people around the world perform common tasks, like buying a stamp or walking a short distance.
He finds that the more developed a society, the faster time seems to go. People work and walk faster (by up to 50%) in wealthier, more industrialized, cooler and more individualistic societies. For the slowest pace of life, head to the least prosperous, least industrialized, warmer, more community-minded countries. On top of that, Levine also believes time goes faster in cities than in the countryside.
Levine further believes that time seems to go fastest of all in the big industrial cities of Western Europe and Asia, adding that their residents are likely to say they are happier with their lives, but are also more likely to suffer from stress. In rural areas in less developed countries like Mexico and Indonexia, time feels slower, and people feel less rushed.
5. When you’re absorbed in something, time seems to stand still
Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi writes about what he calls “flow” – the experience of being totally absorbed in an activity.5 Csíkszentmihályi believes that when we’re in flow, we’re completely immersed, focused and enjoying what we’re doing.
Csíkszentmihályi further states when we’re in flow we’re often full of joy, performing at our very best, and oblivious to the passing of time. We tend to think about nothing else – external stimuli like noise and temperature, or internal ones like hunger. Whether it’s for work or for a hobby, this can be a marvelous way to counter feelings of busyness and rush.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception [↩]
- https://journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cmscontent/ASJ/Acceleration_and_Resonance.pdf [↩]
- https://journals.openedition.org/ress/2893 [↩]
- https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Time-Temporal-Misadventures-Psychologist/dp/0465026427 [↩]
- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flow-Psychology-Happiness-Classic-Achieve/dp/0712657592 [↩]
