Making More Time

One of my friends wrote me the other day saying that he has been crazy busy lately and everything seems like it is going in fast forward. “I need to slow down the time/space continuum,” he said and asked if I had any ideas. Of course he new better then to ask me for help but I think he new what he was getting into so I offered him the following “advice.”

“As for slowing down time, that might be a tall order. Of course in "my world" time doesn't exist (and it's hard to change something that doesn't exist). Actually this line of thinking might work in our favor...when you speak of time going too fast, you really mean that your perception of time is going too fast. What we need to do is alter your perception. If we could find a way to change the rate at which you perceive time to be passing we could trick your brain into thinking that more time had been processed and thus you would seem less busy. Let me explain:

Let's compare your busy day to a digital image. This image has a native resolution of 800x600 pixels. Now the monitor you’re looking at this image on is like your brain. If your monitor display resolution is also set to 800x600 then that picture is going to fill the entire screen and take up %100 of the pixel on it leaving no room for anything else. The effect is even worse if your screens resolution is smaller like say 640x480. Now the image, or your busy day if you will, doesn't even fully display on the screen. So what I'm saying is we need to increase your monitor/brain's resolution to 1024x768 and then you will not only be able to see the entire picture but you'll also perceive extra pixels around it thus making you feel like you have more time.

Well in reality I haven't found a way to naturally (without drugs) change my brain's resolution but I have found something else that seems to help. I have found that when I'm busy, forcing myself to take a few minutes of quite time to pray each day can really make a big difference in how busy I feel. It seems illogical that taking time to do nothing would help make my busy schedule less hectic but for some reason it really makes a difference. I think it helps me put everything in perspective and realize that there is meaning in my life beyond all the chaos. My theory on why this helps is that when you take time for something (in this case prayer) you're forcing yourself to not use all your
pixels on that picture that's making you feel so busy. In effect, instead of increasing your resolution as in my above example your shrinking the picture's resolution so that it's no longer consuming your whole monitor. Maybe I'm crazy but it definitely seems to help. Of course my hectic day is like a cake walk compared to even a slow day for my wife so what do I know (Obviously I've had time to rant here for quite while now).

Wow this got a little long. And to think I was trying to figure out how to give you more time when the answer is right in front of me...Don't read super long emails that go on and on about theories. To late for that I guess."