The One Choice that will Prolong Your Life
Slow is a gift.
The Earth is 4.6 billion years old.
We've been in our current form of humans for 200,000 years.
Civilization is around 6,000 years old.
The average lifespan of a human is 73 years.
As author Bill Bryson explained, if you spread out your arms to resemble a timeline, all human history could be erased from the Earth's historical timeline with a dull nail file.
And as I've come to realize, all of our lives, and our perception of it, is on fast-forward.
Our "fast-forward perception button" gets jammed when we jump from one TV show to the next, from one TikTok video to another, and from one celebrity we've never met to another who couldn't care less about us even if we did meet them.
I'm talking about the entertainment we use to amuse ourselves to death, which distracts us from one breaking news alert to another. Context switching keeps us on a hamster wheel, all to lift our heads from our smartphones and think, "how long have I been scrolling?" And then we have trouble shutting our eyes when our heads hit the pillow.
The timelines mentioned above started as a text I sent to my cousin, who told me the timing is debatable. Another cousin sent me this video explaining the perception of time and what we can do to extend it. I have a smart family.
In summary, the video suggests being bored. I recently took a time management class on Coursera, where the instructor explained the difference between more successful people and less is that the more successful people can do and stick to tedious work. When you have to choose, pick the boring option first. That way, you can save more fun choices for later.
And beyond our day jobs, the boring stuff in life will add up more than the "exciting stuff." On average, you will spend more time sitting in traffic than riding roller coasters in theme parks. You will spend more time brushing your teeth during your life than celebrating your wedding day (including your honeymoon). And you will spend more time laying in bed than all the other "fun" things combined.
These are the mundane aspects of life that must be done, and we spend most of our lives doing them. So there's an opportunity to sink in and be in the moment as we do them. And adding up these moments of presence throughout a lifetime will result in a prolonged perception of it.
Another opportunity to be bored is to not "draw" your phone in public. Instead, pretend you live in the 1990s when checking email was at-home activity, never in the grocery store line, the restroom, or at Grandma's. Just be bored instead, and look at the seemingly long and drawn-out period to be an extension of life.