One of the strangest things about getting laid off from Big Tech is realizing that, for the first time in decades, I actually have time.
And as strange as this new chapter has been, I’ve noticed something surprisingly wonderful.
Time has slowed down.
Not literally, of course. The Earth is still spinning at roughly the same speed. My clocks haven’t suddenly become defective. Monday still becomes Tuesday whether I like it or not.
But my perception of time has changed dramatically.
And honestly?
It feels a little bit like I’ve been given a life extension for free.
Where Did All the Time Go?
When I was working, time seemed to fly.
Days disappeared.
Weeks blurred together.
Months would pass, and I’d suddenly realize that an entire season had come and gone. I’d look back and think, Wait. That was six months ago? It feels like it happened three weeks ago.
The older I got, the faster it seemed to happen.
I remember being a kid and feeling like summer vacation lasted forever.
Now, somehow, I’ll blink and it’s Thanksgiving.
I’ll blink again and it’s Christmas.
I’ll blink one more time and I’m wondering why the grocery store already has Valentine’s Day decorations.
What happened?
Why does time seem to accelerate as we get older?
I never really thought about it when I was working. I was too busy.
There was always another meeting.
Another deadline.
Another project.
Another email.
Another fire to put out.
I didn’t have time to stop and ask why I didn’t have time.
Now that I have more time, I finally got curious.
And after doing some reading and thinking about my own experiences, I came across a few explanations that made a lot of sense.
The Aging Brain
The first explanation is probably the least surprising.
We’re getting older.
Our brains change as we age, and those changes may affect how we perceive the passage of time.
One way I’ve come to think about this is through the analogy of a video game.
Imagine playing a first person shooter when your computer is capable of rendering 120 frames per second.
Everything feels incredibly smooth.
Now imagine that, as the computer gets older, it can only process 60 frames per second.
The game is still running at the same speed in the real world, but you’re receiving fewer visual frames.
The experience feels different.
Some research into the perception of time suggests that something similar may happen in the aging brain. As our neural networks change, the brain’s processing of information can change as well. The details are considerably more complicated than my video game analogy, but the basic idea is that the way our brains process and encode experiences changes as we age.
And this may contribute to our subjective experience of time.
But I think there’s another factor that’s even more interesting.
The Problem With Autopilot
Think back to childhood.
Almost everything was new.
Your first day of school.
Your first time riding a bicycle.
Your first trip on an airplane.
Your first video game console.
Your first crush.
Your first time getting in trouble for doing something incredibly stupid.
When you’re a child, your brain is constantly encountering experiences it hasn’t seen before.
As we get older, that changes.
We become experts at navigating the world.
We know how to drive to work.
We know how to make coffee.
We know how to check email.
We know how to sit through meetings.
We know how to do our jobs.
We know how to drive home.
And then we do it again tomorrow.
And the day after that.
And the day after that.
This is one of the great advantages of having an experienced brain. We don’t need to consciously process every little detail of our lives.
Our brains can recognize patterns and automate familiar behaviors.
That’s incredibly useful.
But I suspect there’s a downside.
When you’re operating on autopilot, you’re not creating as many distinct memories.
Think about a typical commute.
You drive the same roads you’ve driven hundreds of times.
You pass the same buildings.
You stop at the same traffic lights.
You arrive at work.
You might remember the commute as a whole, but you probably can’t tell me what you saw at 8:17 AM on Tuesday three weeks ago.
Your brain didn’t consider that information important enough to preserve.
Now imagine doing that for years.
Same commute.
Same desk.
Same meetings.
Same projects.
Same routines.
Eventually, you look back and realize that five years have somehow disappeared.
The days were full of activity.
But your memory contains relatively few distinct markers separating one day from another.
And when you look backward, those years can feel incredibly short.
This might explain one of the strangest paradoxes of getting older:
You have more years behind you, but those years can feel like they’re passing faster.
Then We Added Social Media
As if living on autopilot wasn’t enough, we now have another problem.
Digital overstimulation.
For many of us, when the workday ends, we don’t actually stop.
We pick up our phones.
We open social media.
We scroll.
And scroll.
And scroll.
One video becomes another.
One post becomes another.
One outrage becomes another.
One argument becomes another.
And before we know it, an hour has disappeared.
The irony is that this content is incredibly stimulating, but the experience itself often leaves very little behind.
Think about what humans experienced for most of our existence.
There was a lot of boredom.
A lot of boredom.
You might spend hours walking somewhere.
Working in a field.
Gathering food.
Making something by hand.
Sitting around a fire.
Waiting.
Waiting some more.
Modern humans have largely eliminated this kind of boredom.
Instead, we have created an endless stream of content specifically engineered to capture our attention.
And there’s something interesting about this.
Our brains have to decide what information is important enough to remember.
But what happens when we’re exposed to thousands of stimulating pieces of information every day?
Everything is urgent.
Everything is shocking.
Everything is outrageous.
Everything is designed to trigger some kind of emotional reaction.
Eventually, nothing is special.
Your brain becomes overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information.
And the result may be that relatively little of it becomes a meaningful, lasting memory.
You spent an hour scrolling.
But what do you remember?
Maybe nothing.
And yet that hour is gone forever.
This is where I think the combination becomes particularly dangerous.
Repetitive routines during the day create fewer memorable experiences.
Digital overstimulation during our free time creates an endless stream of forgettable experiences.
And then we wonder why life feels like it’s flying by.
So How Do We Slow It Down?
Here’s the interesting part.
After getting laid off, my perception of time changed dramatically.
I don’t think it’s because unemployment magically alters the laws of physics.
It’s probably because my lifestyle changed.
I started doing things differently.
And I think some of those changes are things that almost anyone can try.
1. Switch Things Up
The first thing I’ve found helpful is introducing novelty into my life.
Nothing dramatic.
You don’t need to quit your job and become a professional skydiver.
Sometimes it’s as simple as taking a different route to the store.
Going to a different grocery store.
Learning something new.
Changing the order of your daily activities.
I have a bunch of different hobbies and projects.
Journaling.
Software development.
Drone piloting.
Coaching.
Gardening.
And I’ve noticed that when I change what I do from day to day, the days feel longer.
I’m not necessarily doing more.
I’m just doing different things.
The brain has to pay attention.
And when the brain pays attention, it creates more distinct experiences.
Those experiences become memories.
And when I look back on the week, it feels like a week actually happened.
Not just one generic Tuesday that somehow got copied and pasted seven times.
2. Be Where You Are
The second thing I’ve found helpful is focusing intensely on the present moment.
This can be difficult.
Our minds are constantly trying to escape the present.
We’re thinking about something that happened yesterday.
We’re worrying about something happening tomorrow.
We’re mentally composing an email while someone is talking to us.
We’re sitting at dinner while scrolling through our phones.
We’re physically somewhere.
But mentally, we’re somewhere else.
I’ve found that activities requiring complete attention can dramatically change my perception of time.
One example is my daily 15 minute meditation.
When I’m meditating, I have to pay attention to my breathing.
My posture.
My thoughts.
My mental imagery.
And something strange happens.
Fifteen minutes feels like a long time.
Not in a bad way.
It feels like I’ve actually experienced those fifteen minutes.
Another example is swimming.
I recently started taking swimming lessons.
This is a big deal for me because I had a pretty bad experience with water as a child, and as a result, I’ve spent most of my life avoiding learning how to swim.
Now I’m trying to overcome that.
And let me tell you something.
When you’re in the deep end of a pool, you’re trying to float, your face is underwater, you’re blowing air out of your nose, and your brain is screaming, This is a terrible idea!
You are very much in the present moment.
There is no thinking about your email.
No worrying about tomorrow’s meeting.
No doomscrolling.
Just you, the water, and the immediate question of whether you’re about to embarrass yourself in front of the swimming instructor.
And here’s the weird part.
Those moments seem to last forever.
But they also become incredibly memorable.
I can remember specific moments from my swimming lessons days later.
Which makes me wonder if a certain amount of fear and discomfort might actually be necessary for a satisfying life.
Not constant terror, obviously.
But maybe we need to occasionally do things that scare us.
Things that force us out of autopilot.
Things that make us pay attention.
Because those are the moments we remember.
3. Get Bored Again
The final thing I’ve done is probably the hardest.
I’ve dramatically reduced my consumption of digital content.
Especially social media.
Yes, I realize the irony.
I’m telling you to reduce social media consumption through a piece of content that will probably be distributed to you through social media.
I get it.
But I can only tell you what I’ve experienced.
Doomscrolling was eating an enormous amount of my free time.
And when I stopped, something unexpected happened.
I became bored.
At first, this felt terrible.
Then it started feeling wonderful.
I realized that boredom wasn’t actually the enemy.
Boredom gave my brain room to breathe.
Without a constant stream of content competing for my attention, I started noticing things again.
I started paying more attention to what I was doing.
I started having more distinct experiences.
And, most importantly, I started remembering more of my days.
My life didn’t necessarily become more exciting.
But it became more memorable.
And that’s an important distinction.
Maybe We Don’t Need More Time
I started this whole journey thinking that I wanted more time.
But now I’m starting to wonder if that’s actually the problem.
Maybe we don’t need more time.
Maybe we need to experience more of the time we already have.
We can’t stop the clock.
We can’t slow the Earth down.
And we certainly can’t negotiate with the calendar.
But perhaps we can change our perception of the time we’re given.
We can introduce novelty.
We can break our routines.
We can pay attention.
We can tolerate boredom.
We can put down the phone.
We can do things that scare us.
We can be present for the mundane moments instead of constantly trying to escape them.
Because when I think about it, the real tragedy isn’t necessarily that life is short.
It’s that we can spend so much of it barely noticing that we’re alive.
Since losing my job, I’ve started to feel like my days have become longer.
My weeks feel more distinct.
My memories feel richer.
And when I look back, I can actually remember what I did.
It almost feels like I’ve been given extra life for free.
Maybe that’s the real secret.
Maybe slowing down time doesn’t mean making the clock move slower.
Maybe it means making more of the time we have count.
And if that’s true, then perhaps the first step is surprisingly simple.
Put down the phone.
Try something new.
Let yourself get bored.
Pay attention.
And for just a little while...
Be where you are.
Get full access to AsianDadEnergy's Newsletter at asiandadenergy.substack.com/subscribe
