[Lee Yongbeom's Psychology of Happiness] Why Does Working Time Feel Long, but Playing Time Feels Short?

<31>How to Use Time for a Happy Life

The Brain Distorts Experienced Space and Time
Illusions Occur Because of This

When Pursuing Happiness Becomes the Goal
People Feel Time Shortage and Unhappiness

Perception of the Same Time Varies by Person
For Some, the World Is Slow
For Others, It Is Busy and Chaotic

Focusing on the Present Expands Time
The Present Moment Is the Only Possession
Everyone Has the Same 24 Hours a Day
Future

Iyongbeom Novelist

The brain distorts the space and time we experience. It predicts, refines, and transforms space at its own will and shows it to us. This is why optical illusions occur. The same goes for time. The time shown by a clock is constant. Yet, working hours feel long, and leisure hours feel short. At least we are relatively good at distinguishing space, but when it comes to time, we are almost blind. Let’s ask this question: Have you ever been to that cafe? If so, when was it? You can probably easily recall the experience of going to the cafe. However, you might be fuzzy about exactly when you went there. Like grains of sand slipping through our hands, we do not know how time quietly leaks away.

Time Is Always Insufficient

People always live chased by time. The stress modern people feel about insufficient time stems from imagining the future. Imagining a happy future is enjoyable, but it rarely comes true. Writing well does not make one a writer, and singing well does not make one a singer. Yet, because we overestimate future possibilities, we exhaust the ‘present’ diligently. Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, once said, “Imagining the future is a trick in itself.” Eating a rotten apple today to eat a fresh apple tomorrow is foolish.

Happiness does not just come. To become happy, one must invest a lot of time and money. Because of this, people always feel that time is insufficient. According to a 2018 joint study by American and Canadian researchers, when happiness becomes a goal, people feel unhappiness along with a lack of time. Therefore, they tend to relieve unhappiness by acquiring possessions. On the other hand, people who feel happy not only feel they have time to spare but also spend more time helping others.

The sad paradox is that the more one pursues happiness, the farther one gets from it. Yet people always want to be happier than the happiness they currently enjoy. Unhappiness stems from this. Time is given equally to everyone. However, even with the same amount of time, people’s sense of time differs. For example, people with certain personalities feel more pressure from time scarcity. When they feel time pressure, their heart rate, blood pressure, hormone levels in the blood, and breathing rate are likely to increase easily. This time syndrome causes physical and mental changes that shorten lifespan. It is like living a 100-year life in 50 years.

Making One Day Feel Like Ten

Animals have different senses of time. For example, flies can distinguish flickering lights up to 240 times per second, but sea turtles can distinguish only about 15 times per second. Therefore, humans, who perceive about 60 frames per second without tools, find it difficult to catch flies. Marine creatures live much slower lives. For them, the world appears to move in slow motion, making predicting the distant future meaningless. Generally, smaller animals, animals threatened by predators, and animals with more developed brains have faster metabolisms and perceive the world at faster frame rates. They can imagine how to act when they see distant predators or prey. Because of this ability to imagine the future, higher animals live with fear and anxiety.

Humans also have slightly different camera shutter speeds individually. Some live surrounded by tension and anxiety, while others live leisurely in expanded time. For example, skilled meditators expand the present time and stay in ‘the here and now.’ They enjoy a fulfilling life in an eternal present. They do not perceive temporal events like accidents or death as threats and respond calmly even to tragic events. They literally maintain equanimity.

Ordinary people experience time expansion only when faced with urgent crises. In 2007, a research team at Baylor College of Medicine in the United States conducted an experiment where participants were placed on a zero-gravity ride from the 16th floor and dropped for 2.5 seconds. The participants felt the fall lasted three times longer than observers outside. When the body is in danger, the brain starts recording everything. However, because it is difficult to process a large amount of information at once, the brain interprets the event as happening slowly. Some scholars believe that different senses of time can explain why people have different personalities. Different camera shutter speeds explain individual differences in personality, decision-making, work processing, and motor skills. For people with fast frame switching, the world seems slow, while for those with the opposite frame rate, the world is too chaotic and disorderly.

The Paradox of Money and Time

If we could change our sense of time, we could live life multiplied several times over. However, most people struggle desperately within the given time. Must we live chasing happiness that we can never permanently grasp, indulging in material possessions? No. We can buy time, not things. Around us, there are many shops that buy and sell time. People unknowingly sell their time. When entering a restaurant, they order food via kiosks, serve themselves, and even return empty dishes. They pay for their time with invisible ‘shadow work’ in exchange for a small discount. The profits we earn by selling our time at restaurants, gas stations, and banks are negligible.

Unless you plan to live as a naturalist in the forest, you should buy time instead of selling it. A 2017 study by Harvard Business School surveyed over 6,000 people and found that those who hired others to do cleaning, laundry, and cooking were much happier. A 2016 study by the University of British Columbia in Canada also reported that people tend to value time over money. People cared more about commute length and working hours than money, and felt happier when prioritizing time. But who doesn’t know this? To delegate work to others, you must pay, and to reduce working hours, you need financial leeway. Buying time means working harder and falling into a vicious cycle of being chased by time.

There are ways to buy time with less money. First, develop the habit of assigning value to time. For example, if you earn 20,000 won per hour, it is always better to buy an hour that costs less than 20,000 won. Second, spend time with good people doing meaningful activities. Research shows that time spent helping others feels slower. Third, instead of craving future achievements, stay in ‘the here and now.’ Time expands when you focus on the present. Fourth, have confidence that you will be happier as time passes. Many studies support this. Contrary to worries, life after the 50s is generally happier than before.

The only true possession we can call ours is time. Only the present time is my possession that no one can take away. Yet people waste time meaninglessly, regret the passing of the day, and worry about how long this moment of peace will last. Everyone has 24 hours in a day. However, subjective feelings about time differ from person to person. Some live fully, while others live less than half that time. Those who live a short life are even soaked in worries during that half time.

Lee Yongbeom, Novelist