So do you have time to read this?

What else could you do with the precious minutes spent reading this piece? But if you choose to read: sit back. Take your time. Read with pleasure.

We are all subject to the tyranny of time, handcuffed to the ticking clock, responding to deadlines, real and artificial in a drive to make the most of our time, to be productive and to treat time like a treasured commodity. Our time is indeed limited and precious. As Oliver Burkeman has reminded us—we are likely to have 4,000 weeks—we are living the limit-embracing life. Expressed in weeks it doesn’t feel that long.

Before the 14th century, we would have had a very different relationship with time. Our life would likely have been marked by servitude and the demands of the seasons. Medieval clocks introduced the division of the day into hours and by the 1700s most timepieces had minute hands. The ticking clock led us to an addiction to the passing of time—we need to know the time, we want to make the most of our time, we expect to achieve a great deal and reflect on time well spent. We fear wasting our time. We forget that time is a relatively new invention. We let time control us.

We want mastery over our time and struggle to imagine that we will ever be efficient enough or sufficiently productive. We may benefit from adopting deep-time thinking. Looking long term beyond our own lifetime, recognizing the smallness of our existence. We are a tiny part of a vast and evolving universe. Paradoxically recognizing how little we control can help our relationship with time.

What is your relationship with time?

Psychologists have explored how we engage with time and have developed what Zimbardo refers to as the paradox of the time perspective, the way we divide the flow of human experience.

For some there is a sense of being hemmed in by the past, others find it easy to be present in the here and now and others are more future-focused. The categorization is elaborated further to define past, present and future in helpful and unhelpful ways.

For example, we can look back at the past and feel stuck in a negative way, trapped by past trauma or a damaging childhood. These historical experiences can prevent us from forming relationships, trusting our potential or seeing the good in life. Or we can reflect on the joyous parts of our previous life, the bits of life we wish to emulate and repeat, perhaps to return to the charm of family life, the pleasure of relationships that were pure and loving. Such reflections on our past selves are of course rarely simple but a healthy relationship with our history, even if it was not ideal, can create the ability to embrace and learn from the past.

Many of us are urged to “be in the moment,” to be mindful and rest in the here and now. Such a focus on the present can equally take a different tone—the call to hedonism, pleasure, thrill-seeking and instant gratification with no thought for the future. Or more soberly the stoic sense of what will be will be, there is no point trying to change things.

Our relationship to the future can be equally nuanced. A sense of the positive, an outlook that expects good things to happen, a golden future or the catastrophizing of the cynic, the expectation that life will be sour and a disaster. Or even the transcendental, that what matters begins after our time on earth.
Where are you placed in this time matrix? What is your relationship to time? The theory suggests that the optimum relationship is past-and-present positive with an eye to the future, to the need to sacrifice something of the here and now for future success.

Look at these questions and think about the implications of your response on the time matrix.

• Do you get swept up in the excitement of the moment?
• Do you follow your heart more than your head?
• Do you take risks to put excitement into your life?
• Do you worry about the future?
• Do you get nostalgic about your childhood?
• Do you live each day as if it were your last?
• Do you have more good than bad to recall in the past?

(*the full inventory is available at www.thetimeparadox.com)

A future focus

Walter Mischel’s 1972 “marshmallow” study has entered popular culture and is often referenced. The experiment begins with a child being invited into a private room where a marshmallow is placed on the table in front of them. The researcher tells the child that they are leaving the room, if the child does not eat the marshmallow while they’re away, they will be rewarded with a second marshmallow. The footage of the children left alone is perhaps part of the appeal of the experiment—some leaped up and ate the marshmallow immediately, others wriggled and bounced and tried to resist, giving in to temptation a few minutes later. Some did manage to wait for the fifteen minutes that the researcher was absent.

Follow-up studies tracked the children’s progress. Those children able to delay gratification had higher SAT scores, better social skills (as reported by their parents), lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity and better stress responses. This follow-up continued for 40 years, consistently showing that the group who waited patiently for the second marshmallow was successful in life measures. Hence the conclusion that the capacity to delay gratification was critical for success in life.

We are not children in the thrall of marshmallows; however, we might adopt behavior linked to immediate gratification, not because of our innate inability to delay gratification, but because of our unreliable experience of life. Noting this is the first step in changing our ability and attitude.

A painful past

We can be stuck in the past, but it can also impact our potential in creative and meaningful ways. Trauma from our early years can impact our future profoundly. We develop defense mechanisms to protect us from the pain of the past. This might be denial, regression or sublimation. With sublimation, we can draw on our past painful experiences to guide that energy into producing creative output, painting, sculpture, poetry or writing. The pain and trauma are redirected into a channel that expresses this experience.

A life well lived

When we have achieved material success we may ponder, what it means to lead a life well lived. What is it that we truly value? Are we spending enough time on our purpose? Have we done what we can to protect the environment? Or to make lasting change for the good? Has our philanthropy been thoughtful or performative?

What we value

Finding time for what really matters to us seems a logical way of living. We know what we think counts. We engage in that purpose. Yet we are often distracted, hindered and interrupted. Our time can easily be commandeered by our phones, our watches, and our connections—this can be for the greater good, forging bonds, working creatively, and getting stuff done but we need to think critically about the way technology intrudes on our time.

When was the last time you unplugged to think about:

the environment
your legacy
philanthropy?

Building a meaningful life takes time, attention and energy. With the potential to make a difference, we have the power to use our time for the greater good.

A focus on time

Try to engage in your own time-restricted diet. Not intermittent fasting but abandoning your watch and embracing slow-time activities. Go for a walk without a deadline to return. Look at the landscape around you. Speak to a loved one without an end time in mind. Visit a gallery and look at one painting until you have finished, as Flaubert reminds us, “Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.” This is the opposite of task management, a refresh of the way we use time, permitting ourselves to be, to do what Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh encourages: “Don’t just do something—sit there.”

Finally, contemplate death

We know that life is short, that memento mori, we will die. Yet as Freud identified early in his work, it’s hard for us to contemplate our death, to come to terms with our mortality.

What matters to you at this time?
When everything is possible, what is timeless?

The Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on optimal experience introduced us to the concept of flow, to the idea that when we are completely absorbed in what we are doing we transform our relationship to time. We don’t watch the clock, we don’t get distracted by technology—we are absorbed and genuinely satisfied. Our experience is timeless.