🕰️ You’re a time master

Ever wondered why time seems to fly when you're having fun? This seemingly universal phenomenon is more than just a quirky saying – it's deeply linked to how we perceive and experience time. In our enlightening discussion, we dive into our subjective experiences of time and how various factors can alter our perception, transforming our everyday experiences. The premise that a year can only start anew at its beginning is challenged. Instead, we encourage you to seize the remaining 30 days of 2023 as an opportunity for a fresh start and personal growth.

Together, we explore exciting insights from neuroscience to understand why familiarity makes time 'fly' while new experiences appear to 'slow' it down. With a focus on the dopamine clock hypothesis, we unravel the secret behind why time seems to speed up when we're engrossed in an enjoyable activity. The good news? Your perception of time is mutable – once you understand the rules, you can control it.

With the year's end approaching, we discuss practical techniques to maximize the remaining time and set a positive tone for the incoming year. Could there be a better way to prepare for 2024 than by making the most of the present? I share tips on creating new experiences, segmenting our days, and altering our perceptions to make time our ally, not our enemy. On this journey, we learn how to navigate life one day at a time, savoring every moment and creating memories that enrich our time perception. Let's end 2023 on a high and start 2024 with a bang!

Follow the host on IG: @christinamodaffari
Follow the podcast: @hotgeniussociety

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What if the rest of 2022 was the best part of this year? Welcome back to another episode of the Hot Genius Podcast. My name is Kristina Montefari and I am your host, and so this episode is gonna be so much fun. It's gonna give you a lot to think about, because who the fuck says that you have to wait until 2024 for you to have the time of your life? Who, tell me who? Because let me tell you something that you deserve to enjoy yourself. Enjoy your life right now, right now, as you are, and please do not underestimate what you can achieve, who you can become, what you can learn in the next 30 days. Do not underestimate that Seriously.

Speaker 1: 0:48

You know I hear a lot of people making remarks such as oh, just can't wait for 2024. You know, 2023 was shit. I just can't wait for a fresh start. You know, and of course, I understand that I've been that person as well. I get it, but why are we putting the future on a pedestal? Why do we need a calendar to give us permission to create the life that we want, to create a fresh start? Why, you can start fresh at any time, and of course, it's better I'm not gonna lie Like it is better to start January first. I agree, and I'm a purist, I get it, but I'm just saying that it doesn't mean that's the only way that you can have what you want. And this applies to if you've had the worst 11 months so far. Seriously, I don't care what has happened. I care about you and my heart with you if you've struggled. That's not what I mean, but what I'm saying is that it doesn't matter what you have gone through for the last 11 months, whether it was the best or worst time of your life. You have the power. You seriously have the power to make the rest of this year, the 30 days left, amazing, absolutely amazing, and you deserve it. And in this episode, we're going to talk about how you can do that and how, why you can even get excited for this and the way that we're going to approach this is time perception.

Speaker 1: 2:16

You see, time, the perception of time, it's flexible. So, although the actual measurement and the units of time itself, of course, that is, it's mathematical. You can't argue with it. But us, as the person who's experiencing life, experiencing time, that's on us. It's actually very, very fluid, and the reason for this is that, although we don't have a definitive answer.

Speaker 1: 2:40

In science, there's a lot of theories around it, but, all in all, we can all relate to the fact that sometimes time feels like it's flying and then sometimes time couldn't go past any faster, like, for example, you know that saying when you hear, oh my God, like the more fun I have, the more time flies and I'm saying it wrong, but you know what I mean or when you're bored. You know when you're bored as fuck, and time just feels like every second, feels like an hour. Well, that's not random, yeah, that's because, again, there's a lot of different theories around this. But, all in all, what is as accurate as you could possibly get right now is that time perception, the way we experience time, in itself, that's actually in our control, and so a lot of the time as well when people get older, they go oh my God, you know, time just flies. You know, the older I get, time just flies. Again, there's reasons for all of this and we're going to like get into every single, I guess, frequently asked question revolving around time, time perception, and these answers are going to be the fuel that is going to ignite, not just the motivation, for you to make the rest of this year, the best part of this year, but it's also going to give you tangible, actionable tools that you can use right now. That's going to actually help you create the best month of this year for yourself and really set the tone, set the vibe, to create an even better new year.

Speaker 1: 4:20

And so let's begin by answering the question of why is it that the older that we get, time seems to go past faster? And it's that because familiarity itself. So familiarity, meaning you know you're not getting any comfort zone, you're not doing anything new, like you're literally just around things that you're used to. So doing the mundane, like going doing the same job every day, doing the same things that your workplace, waking up the same time, eating the same food, going down the same road, seeing the same people going to the same coals, whatever else, right, this is familiarity, and familiarity makes time go faster, whereas new experiences makes time feel like it's going slower.

Speaker 1: 5:04

And so that's why, when you're a kid or even a teenager, like I still remember when I was like 17, like I remember saying, oh my God, like one year, I couldn't wait to be 18, right, because I wanted to be, like, legally independent, but I was, like I remember that year for like 10 years, I could not fucking wait for me to have turned 18. That one year did not feel like one year to me. Yeah, I even remember like as early as being 21,. Like time, just in comparison to how I experienced when I was younger. You know, when I left high school, time just flew, you know, and the reason for that is because new experiences slow down time, and when you're younger, say in high school, well, you're literally learning new things every single day. You are engaging in new experiences, you're meeting new people, you're being social, all the things.

Speaker 1: 6:02

Because new experiences, new information, it does slow down our perception of time, and so I want you to think about as well when you go on a holiday. Depending on how you experience that holiday, though. So, let's say, you go on a holiday overseas or interstate, and it's more like an adventure, vibe holiday. You know what I mean. Like it's when you're exploring a new place and you're doing activities and you're familiarizing yourself with new culture. You're learning new things, right, meeting new people.

Speaker 1: 6:32

Five days can feel almost like an equivalent to, let's say, a month being in your normal life, back in your home town, right, and that's because of the same reason, when you are on an adventure, vibes, sort of traveling situation, you are exposing yourself to new things and new experiences and new information and learning and getting out of your comfort zone. It makes you feel like you're more present, naturally, and presence slows down time, you know, and obviously when you're traveling you're not familiar with everything and remember we just learned that familiarity makes time go faster, and so that's why people almost have like a subconscious dread or conscious dread, depending on what was going on to return back home. But the subconscious part is that they don't really know why they are dreading going back to reality, as people say, you know, and it's because my guess would be my best bet is that well, they're not so much dreading going back to their life, they're dreading their lives going by so fast again and losing that sense of having all the time in the world. And when we feel like we have all the time in the world, then that naturally makes us calmer, more stable, emotionally. It actually regulates our nervous system. So there's all these things that are happening with time, the concept of time, and you know, and I hope that this gives you some sort of closure and clarity around some of the things that maybe you experience and I hope already it's sort of motivated you to be like you know what.

Speaker 1: 8:12

Actually, true, you know, like I was thinking I'm hoping this is what's going through your mind, like maybe you were thinking to yourself, oh, like I was thinking that 30 days is, like you know, not enough time to go and transform my life or make it the best thing ever and achieve really fun things or or transform or embody something new. Like that's not enough time, you know, but actually no, it is enough time because when I'm on a holiday, and I go on a holiday for like two weeks, I come back a different person. Oh my God, this is possible. Oh my God, I'm going to do it. I'm hoping you're thinking that, because you should be thinking that, come on right, because it's true, you've got anecdotal evidence. Don't take my word for it, take your own life's experiences word for it, because this is some real shit, you know. And so, when you are learning new things and if you, when you are learning new things and and putting yourself aside, your comfort zone and your best friends with, with being out of your comfort zone, right, you're not so attached to being in the familiar settings of your life, then you, my friend, are now able to manipulate time itself and actually not just manipulate time in 30 days, but you actually feel like you can make the most out of your fucking life. You know, and like I say so often and this is something that I teach at the Sim Academy, which is a self-intelligence mastery academy that I teach out of hot genius society, and it's it's my business in which I love so much and I actually one of the things that I teach my students is like how to triple your time, like how do we experience three lifetimes in one? And the way we do that is that I teach them how to break up each day into three days.

Speaker 1: 10:02

And I got and I've been doing this within myself in my own life for a very long time now and then, about a year and a half ago, I stumbled across I haven't read this book, but I stumbled across a book and I read the summary and I spoke to someone about it and I forgot what it's called, but it's pretty much. The concept of this book was like pretty much doing three months in a year or some shit like that, or the 12, the 12 week year, something like this, and it gave me all this validation, because I'm like, oh my God, that's what I've been doing by accident, but like this book is like sort of extra proof that this shit is real, and like that's what actually got me to become even more interested in the concept of time, because it's not enough to just be intuitive about it, because I did stumble upon this whole phenomenon, you could say by accident, just because my brain is always looking to make the most of my life. And so I'd obviously just said that I developed this ability to. I just started to notice how I could manipulate time, but I didn't understand how I was doing it. I didn't understand the mechanisms about play. And then that book came about no, I had not read it, but like I feel like I have and it was saying like the concept of it was to pretty much achieve what you would expect yourself to achieve in one year and do it in three months or something. And then, when I studied the neuroscience of time perception, I'm like, holy shit, this is exactly what I needed to explain why I'm so obsessive the concept of time perception and how to make the most of your life.

Speaker 1: 11:40

Anyway, going back to what I was teaching. What I teach my students right, is that? Well, I asked them what would you do if you did have three lifetimes? What would you do if you had, instead of 24 hours in a day? What would you do with yourself if you had 74 hours in a day? Like, what would change about you and how you experience life? And everyone would like who, I'd ask, would just start telling me all these awesome things, like things that I would have never thought they would be interested in.

Speaker 1: 12:09

And that just goes to show how much we hold ourselves back because of time, because we think we don't have enough of it, whether we think it or say it consciously, or we have this subconscious belief about it where it's like we don't even bother trying to do something because we don't think it's quote-unquote realistic. And just so we're clear, I really recommend you remove the word realistic out of your vocabulary, if you haven't already, because that word, that word, can like really mess up the way we see ourselves and the way we see our life, because realistic, that's very subjective, right. And so going back to being, I guess, unrealistic and how to bend time at your will, well, like I was saying, I teach my students because I do this within myself in how to create three days in one, or how to create three lifetimes in one, and what we're learning right now about familiarity makes time go faster, about new experiences and getting out of your comfort zone slows down time, with linking that to your own experiences of this. You have proof of this from your own experience when you go on a holiday, and you go on a two-week holiday, and it's like almost a spiritual experience where you're learning new things, you're immersed in a new culture. After those two weeks, you literally feel like a different person, right? Or what about the times when you fall in love and you have a fling with someone and it literally lasts for three weeks? Yet you have all these feelings that you almost feel the heartbreak of a ten-year relationship in these three weeks. Why, why, why, why? Why? It's for this very thing. It's because time as a unit of measurement. Of course it's fixed, it's mathematical, cool, but that's separate to how we perceive it, although that might be objective. What is in your control, what is flexible, what is subjective, is how you perceive time, and if you know the rules, you can break the rules. Familiarity makes time go faster.

Speaker 1: 14:14

As people get older, they are more inclined to stop exposing themselves to new things, places, information and experiences, and because of that, that is why time slows down. It's not their only reason, but that is my educated guess and just so we're clear, because I like to be very accurate is that, although I'm telling you all this, you know there is still so much we don't know about the brain, but, as far as I'm aware, as far as what, from what I can see, science is aware of at the moment, at the time of recording this, you know these concepts are very much valid to why we experience the things that we do. But I wanted to go even deeper into this. Okay, so, now that we know, now that you know that you have control over this, that you can actually find a way to experience more, actually enjoy it, actually savor it, without you literally changing time, but by you experiencing like you're having more of it.

Speaker 1: 15:20

Because now, what I wanna say is that when you're having, when you're feeling anxious or when you have anxiety, time flies. And so I'm bringing this up because, in case you were skeptical as to how you can make the most out of the next 30 days and how you can, in general, just bend time at your will. I wanted to to, I guess, answer your objection, and if it's that you still feel skeptical, maybe it could be that you're anxious, because when you're anxious, you're anticipating a perceived yeah, a perceived danger, future moment or something like that, and when you do that, unfortunately, perception of reality becomes distorted. You know, it's really wild, but we think that while we're anxious, we think that reality becomes more accurate because we're recognizing more threats and potential dangers. When, really, in an anxious state, especially if it's chronic, we actually become less accurate of in measuring quote unquote reality. And so I wanted to also share that.

Speaker 1: 16:32

When you were experiencing fear, like intense fear, then time goes really slow as well. And so you might be wondering oh, Christina, but didn't you say that anxiety makes time go faster? Now you're saying that fear and terror makes time go slow. What are you talking about? And so let me just be clear. So anxiety is the anticipation of a future fearful event, whereas fear is the present moment, experience of being afraid. That's the difference. Yeah, so when you're already, when you're afraid, yeah, time goes slow, but when you are anticipating something that's coming, that's when it speeds up, and so please do not underestimate what can happen for you. What can transform for you in a month. You can make the rest of this year the best part of this year, whether you've had a horrible past 11 months, or the best. You can make the next 30 days even better.

Speaker 1: 17:29

And not just because at the end of the year, most people I just feel like a happier, because most people in the world are on a break holiday season's here, christina's birthday's here, and so it's not just that. It's just that simply in order for something to have a beginning, it needs to have a proper end, and usually we can predict the new beginning based on how we end what we currently are in. Remember we live in a world of duality. Think of the law of polarity itself. You cannot have one without the other, and if a new year is a birth, then the end of the year is a death, and we get to create a new beginning in the new year by enjoying the rest of this year because once again, we can. How we end this year or how we end something, is usually how we will begin something, and it's never too late to change that and just remember that time in terms of how we experience it. It's not fixed, it's in our control, it's in our power.

Speaker 1: 18:47

Now I want to answer the next thing, the next objection, so to speak. You might be thinking alright, christina, here, here, alright, you're sort of selling me on how I'm going to make this like the best part of 2023, but if everything you're saying is true, if familiarity really makes time go faster, if anxiety makes time go faster, fear makes time go slower and new experiences slow down time, then why do I have? Why is it that when I have fun, time flies and you tell me to have fun and enjoy the rest of this year what You're contradicting yourself? No, I'm not boo, but thanks for asking. Let me explain that.

Speaker 1: 19:29

So the best way I can explain that is based on a theory called the dopamine clock hypothesis. So what this means is that, well, when dopamine is released usually that's when we're excited, we're having fun it affects our I guess you could say our internal clock, because it's not so much that fun itself is what makes time go faster. It's that usually when someone says, when I have fun, time flies, it's more so the kind of fun that they're having, it's just more so like dopamine is being released, and dopamine, from what we know again, this is a theory here. It affects the way we perceive time, and time seems to go faster, and this is also similar to being in a flow state. When someone's in a flow state, you're so immersed in what you're doing that nothing else exists but the tasks that you're doing, and so you can lose track of time, lose a sense of time, lose track of a sense of self, even, and so the difference here is this.

Speaker 1: 20:30

So let me answer, now that you know that, now that you know that it's not so much your time flies while you're having fun, but more so time flies when a lot of dopamine is released, and there is a difference there, because it's more like dopamine would be more like an excitement, and whereas fun doesn't have to necessarily mean that you are manic or excited or having a dopamine hit or just generally having a good time, what I'm talking about when I say have the time of your fucking life not like at the end of this year while also bending time at your will, enjoy your life so much that you can almost feel like you're experiencing three lifetimes in one, three day times in one, is what we are trying to do here is find the middle ground between enjoying yourself and being present, and that's the missing ingredient, because usually when someone says this, when they go oh my God, time flies when you're having fun. I guarantee you those people who say that when they do think of that saying or that phrase, they weren't really present. They think about that all those times like reflect on it right now, see it for yourself when you have made sayings or statements oh my God, time flies when you're having fun. Think back at that fun moment. Are you sure it was just fun? Or were you actually just really excited, which you can interpret as fun, but you weren't really that present. Because fun is great. I love to have fun, but I just believe that true fun is having the time of your life, but being present, really savoring each moment, really enjoying it.

Speaker 1: 22:27

And usually when you are having fun, you're also sort of in a flow state. You know you're so engulfed in what you're doing, you're not taking breaks, you're just in it, which is great for productivity and a little burst of them throughout your day. But you don't want to live in that state, you want to actually enjoy yourself, and so the way that we can do that is to find a way to be present and to give yourself lots of breaks, beginnings and endings. You know, for example, if you're out at a party, what I do, how I hack time or my perception of time and actually enjoy myself, and how I get to have fun and be present. And, mind you, I drink alcohol. When I go out, I do what is called conscious drinking right, that's a four, another episode.

Speaker 1: 23:20

And what I do is that in the past, when I used to be that person who was like, oh my God, flight, time flies when you're having fun, when I'm having fun, I wish I could, you know, extend it. Well, I wish, granted, because I know how to do it now, but what I used to do then was that I was so in it like I was just on a dopamine high when I was out, that, of course, time flew. I didn't have a moment to come back to earth. I wasn't present, I wasn't in my body, I was just excited, and that's honestly shit. That's just my opinion. For me, I didn't like it.

Speaker 1: 23:53

And so now, when I go out in the same environment, I'm still having fun, I'm still dancing, my, my beauty, right, but what I do is I'm conscious as fuck, so like, and I'm present. When I catch myself being on that high right, I go. You know I'm gonna go take a moment, take a breather, you know, go to the bathroom and I talk to myself and I reflect on what I've already gone through. What I'm doing here is that I'm creating a memory, and the more memories we create, the more we feel like we're experiencing time as well, and so I'm reflecting on it, I'm talking on it. I'm not just experiencing this thing, right, but I'm also taking information about, I'm thinking about, I'm reflecting on a mask myself. What else can I do to really enjoy myself, or what is something that I can try? How can I get my comfort zone mom out here, oh, what's that? That's a little game I can do, like, and I talk to myself and I get to have the best of both worlds. I get to have the time of my life, in this case, while also remaining present, while also feeling like that. Six hours of me being out felt like a whole week, and that's sick, right. That's what we want. We want to have fun, we want to be productive, we want to be intentional, we want to have the time of our lives, we want to be able to remember it, savor it and be present in it. And so that is all true.

Speaker 1: 25:17

Going back to the beginning of this episode, what if the rest of 2023 was the best part of this year for you? What if? Wouldn't it be nice that the next 30 days was the best 30 days of this year? Wouldn't it be nice that you end this year with the best bang, that the beginning of next year is actually better than that, and the momentum is so high that it doesn't even take any effort. It's set up for you. What if? Wouldn't that be nice? And so how we're going to wrap this episode up, let's go over everything that we've gone through. Don't underestimate what you can do in 30 days.

Speaker 1: 26:06

Just because time is a mathematical unit, measurement of time. I mean, oh, my God, that I just went like so backwards, that was jumbled up. How funny. I can't even anyway Going back. So, even though time is the way that we is a unit of measure of how we have time, I really what is wrong with me? You know what I'm saying? Okay, this is very late and recording this late because I was inspired, so forgive me, but you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 26:32

Time itself is finite in terms of how we measure it, there we go. But the way we experience time itself, that's completely flexible. We have control over that. And how we do that is by knowing the rules of how our brain perceives time and to understand that the reason why time feels like it's flying is because we're not actually putting ourselves into new experiences, new things, new information. We've gotten bit lazy as we get older. We've been trying to hard to be familiar, keeping the familiar stay in our comfort zone, and that's actually making time go fast. And again, to fix that is to create new experiences.

Speaker 1: 27:18

And I'm telling you, I'm telling you, this is some real shit. Like don't take this lightly. This episode, if you apply what we've learned today, like this has the power to literally change your entire lifetime, like your whole life. Like this is. This is no joke. Like seriously, really take this in. Listen to this episode twice if you have to, because If you can apply this one more time, if you can apply what we've learned, not only can you have the best month of this year. Like this is our life thing, this is a life skill. Because, like I was saying, please take it from me.

Speaker 1: 27:58

I kind of begin to explain how much I grow, how fast I grow, like it's, I don't I blow my own mind. Every month I reflect back on my month right On Instagram. I document in my Instagram stories every day. I journal most days and I look at everything Then in the month it's my monthly ritual. I look at what I like, all the stories I posted. I look at the diary entries and the journal entries. I reflect and every single time I am not kidding you, I'm not kidding I look at those 30 days and I'm like I'm literally a different fucking person. Like I don't even know who that is. Like obviously do, but you know what I mean Like I'm looking at my past self in a month, like I'm like whoa, like I literally feel older. I feel not older, that's the wrong word. I feel more mature. I feel like I've grown so much. I feel like that month was the equivalent of what I used to experience in like two years, and I'm not exaggerating that.

Speaker 1: 29:06

And I have the science to explain why that happens, how that happens. And it's because the way I live my life is I. It's not familiar. It is obviously got its foundations. You need some stability, but stability is the same as familiar. I have a stable life.

Speaker 1: 29:24

But in every opportunity I can, I'm exposing myself to new things every day In any way. I make it a game and it's fucking fun. I learn new things every day. I read, sometimes three times a day, and people think that that's excessive, maybe, but it's really not. How many times do we check our phones as humans in this modern society? Apparently, it's like a hundred times. Reading a book three times a day is nothing when you look at it like that, if that's the perspective that we have, and I don't see there reading fucking five hours. One seating might be an hour. One seating might be two minutes, who cares? But I'm learning new shit and it's fun for me. I'm doing lots of different things.

Speaker 1: 30:01

I split my days up into three different days. I create beginnings and endings. You know, when you're at the end of the day you wind down and when you begin the day, you fix yourself up, you put yourself together. I do that three times a day. I don't do it, obviously, throughout the day. It's not as intense as in the morning and night, but I'll spend two, three minutes to brush my hair, powder up my face. I'll even change a jacket if I have to or, you know, put a different scarf or I don't fucking know. I do something to mark the end of the segment of my day and my brain believes that I'm experiencing a new day, a hack time. I'm learning new things all the time.

Speaker 1: 30:44

In any situation I can, I challenge myself to do new things while creating stability. For example, I'm always looking to learn new recipes. When I milk prep, or when I drive to the same place that I'm going to, I try to drive to a different route, like anything. And when you can master this, not only will the rest of this year be the best, the rest of your life will be the best, and you'll savor it, and you will not hold yourself back from the things you truly want to do, be and have, because you figure you don't have enough time, because you're trying to do how to be realistic, so to speak. Instead, you'll do what you want, because you know you can, because you know that you won't control your life, and so I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Let me know how you go and share this with someone who you think will enjoy and benefit from it, and I'll see you in the next one. So much love, bye.