More on Time Dilation: Mountain Time

So March is over. I know it’s hard to believe but it was only 31 days. Just like every other March ever. I’ve written about time dilation and how memories are the true x-axis in our experience of time. The topic is immediately relevant to all of us at the exact same time.

Morgan Housel wrote this week:

There’s a well-known idea that time feels like it speeds up as you age. Summer break feels like an eternity when you’re nine years old but your 60s can skip by in a flash.

The leading theory for why this happens is that the perception of time relies on the number of memories formed in a period, and memories are encoded from new and surprising experiences. The monotony of commuting to work on the same road for 20 years passes without leaving a mark. But every day is a memorable surprise to a child experiencing her first summer camp, or learning how big the universe is for the first time.

Time slowed in March because for the first time since childhood many of us are being bombarded with new and surprising experiences.

We learned that shaking hands can be deadly.

That the economy can stop overnight.

How much people can come together, and how isolating lockdown can feel.

Derek Sivers once wrote:

People only really learn when they’re surprised. If they’re not surprised, then what you told them just fits in with what they already know. No minds were changed. No new perspective. Just more information.
See the full post. (Link)

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Going even deeper

More To That, with its signature cartoons, starts with the physical fact that time passes faster in the mountains than at sea level. It’s a fantastic and fun read. Don’t worry, it doesn’t go too Christopher Nolan on you. It ends with a provocative idea:
Remember that when you enter one of those [periods of shock], you enter a space where time expands, and things slow down substantially. The days will move by slower as the haze of uncertainty thickens, and you will feel each minute lengthen as familiar routines fade away into the background.

It is here where your decisions will matter most.

The majority of progress is determined by the minority of choices you make. Setbacks, such as the one we’re all in the midst of, is where we lay down the foundation for how things will move once the dust settles. It’s not the years of continual progress that builds our view of the world, but our response to rapid pushbacks that does.

Full post. (Link)