Click Here to read about the author.

Have you ever lost yourself in a task? Been so absorbed, intrigued, stimulated, challenged by it that you no longer have any sense of time passing? Have you finally finished this task, or temporarily torn yourself away from it, to be surprised by how much time has passed? Was it really one, two, three hours or even a whole day that had gone by? Did it only seem a moment ago since you began?

Or have you had the opposite experience? Have you been so unengaged, bored, and frustrated by a task that you have become almost painfully aware of time passing? And the more you try to concentrate on and battle with the task the more slowly the clock hands seem to move - each minute like an hour, each hour like a day, each day almost an eternity?

I have experienced both of the above and I am sure that many of you have as well. It is the phenomenon of subjective time – the source of the sayings ‘time flies when you’re enjoying yourself’ and ‘a watched kettle never boils’.

Science fiction writers have long enjoyed playing with this concept, making our subjective experience of time passing visible and literal. They describe the absorbing, stimulating adventures of space travellers warping around the galaxy at faster than light speeds, who eventually return home to find that where days or months have passed for them, decades or even centuries have passed for those left behind to live their routine, normal lives. Time has passed hardly at all for the space travellers and they have remained young, whilst those left behind have seemingly burnt up the years and grown old.

Most of us go through our lives assuming that our subjective view of time is not under our control – that basically if we like a task or activity we will get lost in it and ‘lose all track of time’, our minds launching off into realms equivalent to faster than light travel, causing us to be surprised when a ‘felt’ five minutes of concentration turns out to have been half an hour of actual time passing.

But does this have to be the case? Can we take another look at our perceptions of time and find ways to take hold of and manage them to our advantage? Can we make time a consistent ally and friend rather than a mischievous, impish force that is sometimes helpful, sometimes not, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes a pain? Can we take control of a force that seems to please itself as to whether it stretches us painfully over the rack of time as we struggle against its flow, or support us with warm helpful currents as we take an invigorating swim through life?

We are human and as such we experience time through our senses and the systems of our organic brain. When we are absorbed in a task or activity our attentive faculties become highly sensitised. We see and hear things in detail. Our mind becomes like a quick frame, high speed camera moving very fast to pick up as much detail and information as possible, and like the motion pictures taken by a quick frame, high speed camera our personal internal experience of time passing becomes highly defined and ultra slow motion, allowing us to see the details clearly (just as the ultra slow motion pictures from a high speed camera allow us to see the single wing beats of a hovering hummingbird).

Dancers performing intricate steps describe how they slow down the quick intricate steps in their mind so they can see and execute them effectively as they do them. Cricket Batsmen concentrate on the ball travelling towards them by breaking down its journey into chunks. How does it leave the bowler’s hand? What line does it take? Where does it pitch? What direction does it take after pitching? Where does it hit the bat? Where does it go after hitting the bat? By breaking the journey of the ball down into chunks the batsman manages their perception of the travelling ball – they subjectively slow it down in their minds. To those watching the match the ball may look as though it is travelling very fast. Indeed, it may in actuality be travelling at over 90 miles an hour, but to the batsman those seconds between delivery and contact are stretched out, accentuated and detailed.

You hear some commentators say of top players in any sport ‘they seem to have so much time to play their shots’. In fact they have no more time than anyone else, but they know how to control their perception of time, by breaking it into key chunks or episodes, so that their subjective experience of time is slowed down, enabling them to enhance their stroke play.

When we are in this ‘personal slow time’ our minds are effectively making a trade off. We gain an accentuated experience of details relevant to the tasks we are concentrating on, but those details not relevant are filtered out or diminished. So someone in this state (what some sports people call ‘the zone’) cannot hear people speaking to them, will be unaware of noises and activities going on around them and can even ‘forget’ that time is passing at all. So, when they come out of this personal slow time and return to the normal world they can be genuinely surprised that so much actual time has passed. In essence, when our internal experience of time is like the high definition, ultra slow motion pictures from a quick frame, high – speed camera, actual time will seem to pass very quickly for us.

The opposite is true when we experience ‘personal fast time’. When we perceive the activities we are focusing upon as routine and not particularly stimulating our mind acts just like a camera operating at normal speed. We no longer perceive the minute details intrinsic in what we are doing. Indeed our mind can blot them out and replace them with assumptions and our bodies can respond to these with habitual behaviour that has proved effective for us in the past.

If our tolerance for these tasks is good and we do not mind doing them then actual time can proceed at a pace which is more or less synchronised with our internal experience of time passing. If, on the other hand the tasks and activities we are focusing on are particularly mechanistic, uninspiring, even boring, then our brains will take 'good enough' box brownie snaps of them – sufficient for us to know where they are and what we need to do with them. Our brains will effectively take less frames per second and as a result our internal perception of time will speed up – much the same way as an old black and white silent movie speeds up the movements of its subjects, or the way an old style animated ‘flick’ booklet will show quick jerkily moving images when flicked through.

Our minds will rely increasingly on a mental equivalent of persistence of vision to build up a ‘good enough’ picture of what we need to focus on. In circumstances like these, because our brains have a lot of spare capacity that can be focused elsewhere, we begin to notice our external environment more and with it the passing of actual time. We subconsciously start to compare the rate of actual time passing with our own internal, black and white movie, speeded up, subjective experience of time passing. This is why in these situations actual time can seem to drag and we experience ‘the watched kettle never boiling’ syndrome.

As stated above, we are all used to taking our subjective view of time as it comes – as our habits, predispositions and prejudices dictate. But in doing this we are failing to proactively manage one of the major forces affecting our lives, which means that we are probably not being as effective in I our lives and work as we could be.

If we feel time is dragging we do not necessarily have to sit back and accept it, passively waiting for our interest to be stimulated by something more conducive, enjoyable or challenging to us. If we need to get balance into our lives but find it difficult to pull ourselves away from what we find highly challenging and stimulating, allowing it to exhaust us and quickly burn off our equally precious time with friends and family, we do not necessarily have to just shrug our shoulders and say, ‘Well, that’s just the way I am.’

We can learn to control our perceptions of time and enhance our ability to use them to our advantage, assertively choosing to focus them effectively on the areas and activities of our lives that we feel will benefit the most.

Ask your self a trigger question before you go to sleep. The ultimate personal slow time is when you are sleeping. Your subconscious mind does not take any notice of clocks, so if you want to find a solution to a problem think about it as you go to sleep. Your subconscious mind always works in slow time and will do the work for you as you sleep.

Discourage negative distraction. If you find it difficult to get into and stay in personal slow time then limit unneeded and unhelpful distraction:

Make yourself comfortable. To be able to concentrate and encourage personal slow time you need to feel comfortable. Get a comfortable chair. Make sure the temperature is not too hot or cold. Have friendly things around you that reassure you. Listen to music that helps you think.

Make yourself uncomfortable. If you want to shake yourself out of personal slow time and become more aware of the actual rate of time passing make yourself feel uncomfortable. Stand up. Move from a comfy to a hard backed chair. Turn the heating down a bit. Listen to music that distracts you. Drink a pint of water!

Find the soft spot. Sometimes what stops us getting into personal slow time and really concentrating on a task is the fact that we just do not like the thought of what we have to do. We therefore procrastinate – find ways to put off those things that we really ought to be doing. This is usually because we see the task as one big daunting lump of commitment, which may be uninspiring, tiresome, or even frightening.

Look at the task again, but now break it into chunks. Then see which parts of it appeal to you. Which parts suit your mood? Which parts suit your strengths? Start your work on the task in these areas. You will overcome your procrastination, find it easier to go into personal slow time and enhance your concentration.

Avoid feeling guilty about seemingly doing nothing. One of the enemies of using personal slow time effectively is guilt - guilt at simply thinking, concentrating and physically doing nothing. The next time you see someone concentrating deeply notice their behaviour, how they hardly move, or if they do they seem to be rehearsing something slowly and deliberately (just like a tennis player before they make their serve).

Think of the example of Stephen Hawking who, because of his physical condition, had to find a new way of working based entirely on thought and being able to visualise, keep and manipulate complicated ideas and equations in his mind without the aid of being able to write them out or otherwise express them. Work and concentration can go on entirely unseen. The quick frame, high – speed camera, ultra slow motion concentration of personal slow time needs all our minds attention and energy, and is not aided by any unnecessary activity undertaken purely to assuage feelings of guilt.

Gain control over your subjective perception of time by practising the manipulation of your senses. The following exercises will help you manage how you perceive things through your senses. Once you can do this you will find it easier to manage your perception of time. This is because the only way you perceive time is through your senses, so if you can manage or manipulate your senses you are more likely to be able to manage your perception of time.

Another exercise that can help us stay with a problem rather than rushing too quickly towards its solution is to listen to music as emanating from a central point (which is in fact what it does), rather than listening to it as travelling from a start to a finish.

Break time and what you are focusing on into chunks. As mentioned earlier, encourage personal slow time by breaking down a task and/or the flow of time into chunks. What are the constituent parts of the task? What do they look like? Where are they? What order are they in? If you are undertaking a physical activity what happens first? What next and so on? Analyse each phase in detail. Get to know how it behaves and reacts.

Find an anchor and use it as a trigger. If you want to go into personal slow time find an anchor, such as a piece of music. Put this music on every time you wish to go into slow time. It will eventually act as a trigger to help you change your perceptions. Do the same if you want to leave personal slow time, but use a different anchor/piece of music.

Stimulate the Brain. One of the best ways to get into personal slow time is to stimulate the brain with the things it finds interesting. The brain likes colours, pictures, associations, emphasis and shadings. So when you need to concentrate on a problem use a technique or approach, such as mind mapping or rich pictures, which gives it these things (see Tony and Barry Buzan’s ‘The Mind Map Book’ for more information).

Bore the brain. If you want to get out of personal slow time go out of your way to bore your brain. Your brain does not like black and white, straight lines, blocks of text, routine mechanistic tasks. So when you want to drag yourself away from a task that is becoming over stimulating write some bullet points concerning what you need to do next, create a boring summary of what you have done so far, do routine housekeeping tasks. Your brain will soon become aware of the actual rather than subjective amount of time passing.

But this need not be the case. We can become masters of our perceptions of time. Through this mastery we can enhance our ability to focus and concentrate on the things that matter to us, and to consciously draw back and regain personal balance when in danger of becoming over – stimulated, or carried away by interesting times and events.

There are specific things we can do to acquire the skill of managing our personal perception of time. These are described above and most of them are straight forward, only requiring patience and practise in order to be effective.

To repeat, we all have the potential to become masters of our own personal time and get the most out of our lives and work. When you next feel time dragging you down or carrying you away in directions you do not want, remember that you do have a choice; that you can learn to swim safely and enjoyably within and through time's currents, rather than struggling against them.

The Alchemist by Ian M Banks