【短片】Chris Williamson - How to Slow Down Your Life Before It's Gone

Chris discusses how to slow down your perception of time so you can savour every moment.

克里斯討論了如何放慢你對時間的感知，讓你能夠盡情享受每一個瞬間。

連結

• Youtube影片連結 - youtu.be/nUgduvFxp4k

• Chris Williamson官方Youtube頻道 - www.youtube.com/chan...

Youtube影片

全部內容

When I first started Modern Wisdom, I was obsessed with why life felt like it was going
so quickly and how to slow it down.
So I decided to revisit the topic recently.
Why do some days feel like years and some years feel like days?
As we get older, life feels like it's moving faster and faster.
We look back on a year and can't really remember where it went.
Months start to pass like minutes and we begin to feel so helpless against the passage
of time that it almost seems as if we're an observer of our lives, not a participant anymore.

The answer to slowing down time is simpler than you think.
The first thing to know is that no matter how boring the Zoom call, exciting the holiday,
or old you are, time always passes at exactly the same rate for you.
Shock, horror, I know.
You have the same number of hours in the day as you ever have and they are always moving
at the same pace.
Even if you are circling a black hole or moving near the speed of light, your experience of
time remains the same.
One second is one second.
Always.
So if this is the case, why do we feel like time changes speed?

當我剛開始《現代智慧》時，我就一直著迷於為什麼生活感覺過得如此之快，以及如何放慢它。 所以我最近決定重新探討這個話題。 為什麼有些日子感覺像一年，而有些年卻感覺像一天？ 隨著我們年齡的增長，生活似乎變得越來越快。 我們回顧過去的一年，卻幾乎記不起來時間都去哪裡了。 幾個月的時間開始像分鐘一樣流逝，我們開始感到對時間的流逝如此無助，以至於我們似乎只是生活的觀察者，而不是參與者。

放慢時間的方法比你想像的更簡單。 首先要知道的是，無論是多麼無聊的視訊會議、多麼令人興奮的假期，或者你有多老，時間總是以相同的速度流逝。 這可能讓你感到震驚，我知道。 你一天裡擁有的小時數與過去一樣，而且它們始終以相同的速度流逝。 即使你繞著黑洞旋轉或接近光速移動，你的時間體驗仍然相同。 一秒鐘就是一秒鐘。 永遠是這樣。 那麼，如果情況如此，為什麼我們會覺得時間的速度發生變化？

Well there is a difference between present time and remembered time.
Your experience of time differs in the moment versus when you recall it.
Your present time will always remain at the same speed, but your remembered time can vary
widely.
So, when we say that time is "speeding up", we don't mean it actually passed more quickly,
but that it seems to have passed more quickly when we recall it.
It's not "that week went so quickly" but "I don't recall what I did during that week".
Memory is our way of reliving our past experiences and re-experiencing time.
We remember our time with respect to what we were doing, where it was, who we were with,
and the emotions that we had.

So here's the first key insight.
The more memories you have from a past experience, the more that that experience gets expanded
in time.
Think back to a holiday you went on 5 years ago.
Even though it was a long time ago, you will probably still be able to recall a lot of
details, making it seem like it lasted for longer and that time moved more slowly for
that week.
So if time is memory and we want more time, then what we really want is more memories.
But this still doesn't explain why our recollection of time speeds up with age until you consider why memories are made.

好吧，當下時間和回憶中的時間是不同的。 你對時間的體驗在當下與回憶時是不同的。 你的當下時間始終保持相同的速度，但你回憶中的時間可能會差異很大。 因此，當我們說「時間正在加速」時，我們並不是指它實際上流逝得更快，而是指當我們回憶起來時，感覺它流逝得更快了。 這不是「那週過得太快了」，而是「我記不起來在那週做了什麼」。 記憶是我們重溫過去經歷的方式，也是重新體驗時間的方式。 我們根據當時的活動、地點、與誰在一起以及當時的情緒來回憶我們的時間。

因此，這裡有一個重要的見解。 你從過去的經驗中擁有的記憶越多，這個經驗在時間上就越被擴展。 回想一下五年前你去過的假期。 即使已經很久了，你可能仍然能夠回憶起很多細節，這會讓你覺得它持續的時間更長，並且在那一周裡，時間流逝得更慢。 因此，如果時間是記憶，而我們想要更多時間，那麼我們真正想要的其實是更多的記憶。 但是，這仍然無法解釋為什麼隨著年齡的增長，我們對時間的回憶速度會加快，除非你考慮到記憶是如何產生的。

Your brain is lazy.
It wants to do as little work as possible and conserve as much energy as it can.
This is why it likes routines, habits, and thought patterns, because once it's done "that
thing" a few times, it needs to think less and less about doing it again.
The thing is, when you're young, almost everything is new information.
This is the first time you've been to the park or school or swam in the big pool or
kissed a girl or been on a boat.
Your brain is constantly recording.
Think about how much you can remember from the first day you moved to where you live
now compared with any day from the last month.
Or think about what happened on your first ever driving lesson.
I'm guessing you can recall it quite a lot.
Perhaps even the route you took, the car you drove.
Yet if you try to remember the experiences in your car from last Monday, you might not
even know if you drove it at all.

This is the most important lesson to know about slowing down time.
Your subjective experience of time is based on your memories and the best way to ensure
that your brain remembers what you're doing is with two things, novelty and intensity.
When something new or intense happens, your brain doesn't know what it needs to remember.
So it just holds on to all of it.
It's never encountered this before.
So it doesn't know if it will need this information in future.
Therefore it starts recording what's happening.
This is why holidays are such a good example to show how time and memories are linked because
there's lots of new things and lots of intensity happening.

你的大腦很懶惰。 它希望盡可能減少工作，並節省能量。 這就是為什麼它喜歡例行公事、習慣和思維模式，因為一旦它「做」某件事幾次後，就需要思考得越來越少才能再次完成它。 問題是，當你年輕時，幾乎所有事情都是新的信息。 這是你第一次去公園或學校，或者在大型游泳池裡游泳，或者親吻一個女孩，或者乘船旅行。 你的大腦不斷地記錄。 想想你可以回憶起多少關於你現在居住的地方的第一天，與上個月的任何一天相比。 或者想想你第一次駕駛課程發生了什麼。 我猜你可能還記得很多細節。 也許甚至包括你走過的路線和開的車。 然而，如果你試著回憶一下上週一你在車裡經歷的事情，你可能都不知道你那天是否開過車。

這是關於放慢時間最重要的知識。 你對時間的主觀體驗是基於你的記憶，而確保你的大腦記住你正在做什麼的最佳方法就是兩個要素：新奇和強度。 當發生新的或強烈的事情時，你的大腦不知道需要記住什麼。 所以它會牢牢抓住一切。 它以前從未遇到過這種情況。 因此，它不知道是否需要在將來使用這些信息。 因此，它開始記錄正在發生的事情。 這就是為什麼假期是很好的例子，可以展示時間和記憶是如何聯繫起來的，因為有很多新的事物和強烈的事情發生。

I took a trip to Africa in 2018 and I can still remember the shape of the worn leather
shoes that the hotel porter had on and the ornithology book that he was carrying and
the sound of his feet on the steps down to the hotel room.
This is the holiday paradox.
Time flies while you're having fun, but feels long in retrospect.
And as we age, our adult life gets into routines where we do the same actions day after day
after day.
We drive the same route to work.
We speak to the same people.
We even have the same thoughts.
We allow ourselves to be dominated by monotonous routines, passive least resistance, and habituated
thought patterns.
The TLDR is that routines compress time.
Habitual behaviors are processed with less cortical effort, meaning less attention and
fewer stored episodic memories.

Childhood is rich with firsts, which become rarer with age.
This is novelty saturation theory, the idea that as we age, we experience fewer new things
so our brain stops encoding as many detailed memories, which makes time feel like it's
passing faster.
And this is the uncomfortable truth.
As we get older, days move quickly because we can't remember them.
And we don't remember our days because we haven't done anything memorable with them.
Our days are forgettable.
Therefore we forget them.
This is why I hate it when people say "that's just the way I am and always will be".
To me, that is someone who has internalized the monotony of their thought patterns so
deeply that they literally identify with them.
Monotony is the enemy of a well-remembered life.

我於2018年去非洲旅行，至今仍然記得酒店行李員穿著的磨舊皮鞋、他攜帶的鳥類學書籍以及他在通往酒店房間的台階上行走的聲音。 這就是「假期悖論」。 當你玩得開心時，時間飛逝，但回顧起來卻感覺很長。 而且隨著年齡的增長，我們的成年生活陷入了例行公事，每天都重複相同的動作。 我們走相同的路線去上班。 我們與相同的人交談。 我們甚至有相同的想法。 我們允許自己被單調的例行公事、被動的順從和習慣化的思維模式所支配。 簡而言之，例行公事會壓縮時間。 習慣性的行為需要較少的皮層努力，這意味著較少的注意力以及更少的儲存的事件記憶。

童年充滿了第一次體驗，而隨著年齡的增長，這些體驗變得越來越少。 這就是「新奇飽和理論」，即隨著我們年齡的增長，我們經歷的新事物越來越少，因此大腦不再編碼那麼詳細的記憶，這使得時間感覺過得更快。 這是一個令人不安的事實。 當我們年紀更大時，日子過得很快，因為我們記不住它們。 而我們記不住我們的日子，是因為我們沒有做任何值得紀念的事情。 我們的日子是難以忘懷的。 因此我們遺忘了它們。 這就是為什麼我討厭人們說「這就是我的本性，而且永遠都會這樣」。 在我看來，那個人已經將自己思維模式的單調性內化得非常深，以至於他們實際上與這些思維模式認同。 單調是美好回憶生活的敵人。

So in order to slow time down, you have to give your brain a reason to pay attention.
Leading a full life means having lots of varied experiences that will later be memorable.
This means you need to start saying "yes" to more new things and "no" to more of
the same things.
Even if you've never wanted to try salsa dancing or yoga or an open mic comedy night,
saying yes will guarantee that you create some novel and potentially intense memories.
Sure, it might be easier to stay on the couch instead of going out.
But you know that you won't recall a single thing if you spend yet another night watching
Netflix, whereas you will have tons of memories if you go and do something new.
Which in retrospect, makes time pass more slowly.

Doing novel and intense things is entirely within your control.
Allow yourself to be immersed in the things that you spend your time doing.
Regularly plan new experiences, talk to different people, say yes to adventures whenever you
can, walk the dog on a different route, visit a new town, eat at a fresh cafe.
These are all memory investments that future you will be able to draw dividends from.
Each day, you can ask yourself the question "what did I do today that will stand out
in my memory?"
And the more that you can answer this question clearly, the slower your time will move.
Eventually, you are going to be looking back on your life.
The choice is between viewing a beautiful, varied art gallery stretching as far as the
eye can see, or a grey, monotonous hallway peppered with the ghosts of TikTok dances
and Netflix series.
If you make your life memorable, you will remember it.

I think I got frustrated because I wanted to make progress that was based around routine
because I understood that it was very important for me.
But I also had this realization so early on that felt in conflict with my desire to make
progress.
So I think another tension in a lot of the conversations today has been about tension.
Another tension is how do I lean into routine to capture the upsides of predictable progress
whilst also blending that with the variation that's needed in order to give me memory dividends,
to expand my life, to make time feel like it's moving more slowly.
Difficult one.
It's a difficult thing to balance, but it is important.

那麼，你可以做些什麼呢？ 首先，要意識到這種現象。 你越瞭解大腦的運作方式以及為什麼時間感覺在加速，你就越能做好準備。

為了放慢時間，你必須給你的大腦一個理由去關注。 過充實的生活意味著擁有許多多樣化的體驗，這些體驗將在未來成為令人難以忘懷的回憶。 這意味著你需要開始對更多的新事物說「是」，而對更多相同的事物說「不」。 即使你從未想過要嘗試薩爾薩舞、瑜伽或開放麥克風的喜劇之夜，說「是」也能保證你會創造一些新穎且潛在強烈的記憶。 當然，待在沙發上可能比外出更輕鬆。 但是你知道，如果你又度過了一個晚上觀看 Netflix，你將不會回憶起任何事情，而如果你去嘗試一些新的事物，你將會擁有大量的記憶。 從長遠來看，這會讓時間感覺流逝得更慢。

做新穎和強烈的事情完全取決於你的控制。 讓自己沉浸在您花費時間所做的事情中。 定期計劃新的體驗，與不同的人交談，儘可能地對冒險說「是」，走不同的路線遛狗，參觀一個新的城鎮，在一家新的咖啡館用餐。 這些都是記憶投資，未來的你將能夠從中獲得回報。 每天，你可以問自己一個問題：「我今天做了什麼會讓我印象深刻？」 並且你越能清晰地回答這個問題，時間就會流逝得越慢。 最終，你會回顧你的一生。 你的選擇是觀看一個美麗、多樣的藝術畫廊，它延伸到無邊無際，或者走過一條灰色、單調的走廊，上面佈滿了 TikTok 舞蹈和 Netflix 劇集的幽靈。 如果你讓你的生活變得令人難忘，你就會記住它。

我認為我感到沮喪是因為我想建立一個基於例行的進度，因為我知道這對我來說非常重要。 但我也很早就意識到這一點，這與我想要取得進展的願望相衝突。 因此，我認為今天許多對話中的另一個張力也是關於張力的。 另一個張力是：我如何利用例行公事來獲得可預測進步的好處，同時將它與爲了讓我獲得記憶回報、擴充套件我的生活、讓時間感覺流逝得更慢而需要的變化相結合？ 這很困難。 這是一個很難平衡的事情，但非常重要。