how to slow time
we're exactly halfway through the year today
It’s July. It is the kind of day where the sun lingers like it’s not ready to go home, crickets hum, the air is thick with nothingness. As a child, this time of year felt slow - not boring, but spacious. I remember having no urgency to be anywhere but where I was.
That feeling, that endlessness of a summer afternoon, is hard to come by now. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I experienced it. Time no longer stretches itself in our lives; instead it shrinks, hastening its speed. Our days blur into years. Conversations are interrupted. Notifications pile up. Even joy is fast: fast fashion, fast media, fast friendships. And somewhere along the way of growing up, we become disconnected from our internal clock.
Anyone I meet, in some way, tells me that they want to “make the most of” their time. Even I say it. But what I think all of us really mean is: we want it to slow down. We want more of the richness, the depth, the saturation, the presence.
We don’t want more time.
We want time to feel different.
When time collapses: why everything feels so fast.
Psychologically, our perception of time is not objective; it’s shaped by attention, memory, and emotional salience (how noticeable or important something feels). Time perception shifts when we do something new because novelty slows time; when we do something that inspires us, because awe slows time; when we do something with presence, because deep attention slows time. This is why childhood summers felt endless: the world was new and we were still paying attention.
But modern life and adulting conditions us into what psychologist Marc Wittmann calls “temporal disintegration” in his book ‘Felt time: the psychology of how we perceive time”’. It is when time feels fragmented and slippery. You might recognize it in phrases like:
Where did the day go?
This week disappeared.
I blinked and it was over.
This isn’t just a poetic loss, it’s a neuro-cognitive shift. When our attention is constantly divided by screens, notifications, and tasks, our hippocampus (the brain’s memory processor) doesn’t code the information meaningfully. The more distracted we are, the fewer long-term memories we make. And without those anchors, our sense of time becomes unstable.
Reflection point:
Think about a recent week where time felt like it disappeared.
What were you doing?
How much of that week was spent in divided attention?
Were there any moments of slowness you can remember or did the week pass in fragments?
The myth of false urgency.
Hyperconnected living has created an illusion that everything is immediate. Every notification feels like a call to action. Every headline feels like an emergency. We scroll through stories faster than we can process them, as our nervous systems absorb the ambient noise of a perpetual state of fight or flight.
Part of the problem is how we’ve come to measure time through productivity metrics: how much we can do, how fast, and how visibly. We value the social media post more than the moment we are in. We expect replies in seconds. Friendships become threads of texts with no time to deepen. Parenting becomes a logistical operation. Children are over-scheduled and families live parallel lives under one roof. Even rest has become performative.
The result? We live lives that run smoothly but lack emotional coherence. Beneath the surface of this urgency lies something else: not just stress, but grief.
Hidden behind our obsession with speed is something deeper: anticipatory grief - the emotional state of bracing for a loss that hasn’t happened yet. It is an unconscious response to living in a world that feels precarious, fast-changing, and uncertain. We hurry not just because we’re busy, but because we fear what we might lose if we slow down. It’s not just anxiety. It’s mourning in advance.
The more we fear losing time, the more we try to control it, and therefore, the less we’re able to stay in it.
Activity: Set a recurring 5-minute “stillness anchor” in your day.
Choose one small moment (washing your face, stirring coffee, walking to the subway).
Commit to doing it without rushing, multitasking, or background noise.
Let it be unproductive, uneventful, even boring. That’s where presence live
Fast culture is shrinking our souls.
From fast fashion to binge culture to algorithms, we are living in what sociologist Hartmut Rosa calls an era of social acceleration - where even pleasure has to be fast, optimized, and consumable.
This has led to a collective decline in our capacity for anticipation, deductive reasoning, empathy, and reflection. We don’t look forward to things anymore; we pre-order, binge, and move on. We don’t process joy or sorrow; we scroll through it. We consume instead of dwell. We don’t use contextual cues to see how something pertains to us, we want everything to be catered to our exact needs and identities.
Think about it: A friend sends a life update in a 15-second story. You reply with a heart emoji. It’s efficient, but is it connection?
This lifestyle has spiritual and communal consequences:
In friendship, we default to reaction instead of connection.
In art, we demand content over craft.
In community, we replace sustained presence with “checking in.”
Reflection point
When was the last time you waited for something with joyful anticipation?
What’s something you could plan slowly, look forward to, and let unfold?
We can’t slow time alone. We live in relationship to the pace of the people around us. Even if you personally adopt slower rhythms, if everyone else around you is moving at a frantic pace, your nervous system will eventually match theirs. This is known in psychology as emotional contagion: our internal states synchronize with those we are around. Which means if we want to live more slowly, intentionally, and presently, we have to build environments and communities where slowness is seen, practiced, and protected.
When we glorify productivity and quick turnarounds, we teach others that worth is earned through speed. When we respond immediately to every message but never make time for long conversations, we normalize shallow attention. But when we model presence, when we linger in conversation, when we show up without needing an excuse, that models something else entirely: relational time.
That means rethinking how we show up in community:
Slow communication (voice notes, letters, long dinners)
Repetition and ritual (monthly potlucks, weekend walks)
Emotional labor as investment, not inconvenience
Practicing the awkwardness of mutual care without needing it to be efficient
Time as a sensory experience.
The paradox is that time slows down when we do less, but only if we do it differently. Not just empty space, but presence.
To reclaim that, we need to re-engage our senses. Instead of scrolling, we can make. Instead of consuming, we can create. Draw. Bake. Walk without a podcast. Write something no one will see. Play a board game. Fix something with your hands. These acts of creativity and ritual bring time back into the body.
The experience of time isn’t just mental, it’s also physiological. Our nervous system determines whether we experience time as safe or threatening, slow or fast. When we’re in fight-or-flight mode, everything feels rushed. But when we feel safe (i.e. when we’re grounded, nourished, and unhurried) our perception of time expands.
Practices like diaphragmatic breathing, stretching, or simply lying down without stimulation aren't just relaxing, they can help recalibrate your internal tempo. Time softens when your body does.
I explore how to reclaim time and break out of the myth of false urgency in my book - Toxic Productivity. Grab your copy anywhere books are sold!
Activity: Try a 3-2-1 grounding practice
Name 3 things you can see.
Name 2 things you can touch.
Name 1 thing you can hear.
This redirection helps your body step out of urgency and into presence.
Small Ways to Stretch Time
Name the urgency: Before reacting, ask: Is this urgent, or does it just feel urgent?
Interrupt the scroll: Replace one daily media input with something tactile: kneading dough, watering plants, playing with clay.
Observe seasonal markers: Light a candle at dusk. Keep track of the moon. Let the natural world slow your internal pace.
Sensory reclamation walk: Go for a 20-minute walk without your phone. Choose to notice five distinct things: a color, a sound, a shadow, a texture, a movement. Reflect on how it shifted your sense of time.
Plan a “slow gathering”: Host something intentionally analog: a handwritten-letter night, a no-phones dinner, a journaling circle. Make slowness a shared ritual.
Uncurated creativity practice: Choose a medium (paint, collage, embroidery, clay, writing). Set a timer for 30 minutes. No purpose, no posting. Just process.
If July afternoons once felt like freedom, ask: What made them feel that way?
Often, the answer is: no agenda. Unstructured time. Sensory play. Mutual presence. A sense of enoughness.
Activity
Choose one day a week to live “off the clock.” No time-blocking. No optimizing. Just one afternoon of following your natural rhythms: rest, hunger, joy, movement, conversation.
Note how long that afternoon feels.
Notice what emerges when you stop trying to extract value from time and just live in it
The world isn’t going to slow down. But you can.
Rebuild your relationship to time by shifting your attention from urgency to awareness. Move away from efficiency and control, and toward intention and presence. Choose not to rush through your one precious life.
Recently, Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day”, particularly the line, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” had a resurgence on TikTok. It’s not surprising that young people are gravitating toward this language, this longing. We are a generation overwhelmed by climate crisis, geopolitical instability, digital overstimulation, economic precarity, and a relentless stream of self-optimization. In that context, slowing down isn’t just romantic: it’s a psychological need.
But I also want to name this plainly: the ability to slow down is, in many ways, a privilege.
Time inequality is real.
Not everyone has access to slowness.
If you’re a single parent, a gig worker, a first-generation immigrant, or someone navigating systemic barriers to safety or stability, slowness can feel like a luxury you don’t have. Your days might be governed by survival, not mindfulness. In these cases, the invitation to “be more present” can sound tone-deaf or dismissive of structural realities.
How can you help?
That’s why slowing down cannot be a purely individual pursuit, it must be cultural and collective. We need to reimagine slowness not just as a personal wellness practice, but as a social value. That means:
Supporting labor protections and living wages, so people don’t need to work multiple jobs to survive.
Advocating for childcare, paid leave, and policies that create margin in people’s lives.
Creating communities where emotional labor, care work, and rest are shared.
When slowness is treated as something only accessible to the resourced, we reinforce the very systems that make so many feel rushed, exhausted, and unseen. This is exactly why the Trad Wife trend gained popularity. The aesthetic offers a sanitized illusion of peace that many crave but without interrogating who has historically had access to time, care, and domestic ease.
But when we protect slowness as a right for everyone, not just a privilege, we open the door for more people to experience life at the pace where meaning can emerge.
So yes, choose not to rush through your one precious life. And also, hold space for others who don’t have that same choice yet. If you have time, share it. If you have margin, extend it. That, too, is a way to slow down time, by letting your presence ripple outward.
Reflection point
Where in your life are you trying to “get through” something that might deserve to be felt instead?
What would your life look like if you honored boredom, wonder, and unproductivity?
Who do you need to invite into your slow moments and who do you need to release?
That’s all for now! May your tables, health, and happiness be always in abundance. Live well + be well xx,
Israa
Loved it! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for writing!