Tuesday's Rule #7
How to live longer
Last week's rule explored the importance of memories for a happy, fulfilled life.
Today, we're continuing with the theme of memories and the importance of making them, but this one comes with a bolder claim.
Memories can make your life longer.
OK, I'm not suggesting that having novel memories will actually extend the number of years you will live.
However, I stumbled upon the idea that memories can make your life feel longer.
So the rule I’m exploring this week is:
Stretch Time With Novelty
If you can bear it, think back to the pandemic and the days of lockdown.
It was a strange period for many reasons, some obvious and some less so initially.
One particular oddity was its impact on our concept of time.
A survey conducted in the UK suggested that more than 80% of people experienced changes in how quickly they perceived time passing.
If your recollection is anything like mine, you'll remember and agree that time moved in a rather bizarre way.
Days passed painfully slowly as we moved from one Zoom call to another.
However, the weeks and months seemed to race by.
Clap for carers each Thursday night seemed to be on us again in a blink. My dad's Monday night quiz here again? Easter already?
We estimate time passing in two ways: prospectively (how fast time is passing right now) and retrospectively (how quickly the last week or decade went by).
This explains why we were able to have the seemingly incompatible feeling of days moving slowly but time racing by incredibly quickly.
Believe it or not, this is all linked to memories.
Memories are one of the ways that we judge how much time has passed. When you're recalling how long it has been since something, you're remembering all that has happened since. Compared to usual, if not much has happened, your perception is likely that it has been shorter than it has and that time is moving quickly.
This explains why it felt like the days and weeks seemed to fly by in lockdown.
It also explains how the opposite can be true when making new, richer memories.
When I was a kid, the school holidays seemed to last forever. A whole 6-weeks of freedom! By the time September rolled around and it was time to start a new school year, it seemed a lifetime since we had broken up for the summer.
Even now, when I go on holiday, the days tend to race by, but then when I'm back to work, I tell everyone that I interact with that "it feels like ages that I've been gone!"
This feeling isn't limited to significant life events or long trips; it's true even in the smaller sample of my weekends. A ‘typical’ weekend might go by in a blur of routine, feeling much shorter than it actually is. But weekends filled with new experiences or activities often feel much longer.
This is all because of the novel memories that were laid down during these new experiences.
"The more new experiences we have, the longer time feels" - Pavan Madan, MD, a psychiatrist at Community Psychiatry sums this all up in one sentence.
When we engage in new experiences, our brains process and store more information. This processing creates what can be described as 'rich memories'—vivid, detailed recollections that stand out in our mental timeline.
These memories act as milestones in our perception of time, each a data point that our minds draw upon when reflecting on the past.
The vast majority of things we do and see don't register in a way that means we memorise them. Doing new things increases the amount of memory we are laying down, slows time down, and makes our lives more full.
I don't know about you, but the feeling of life racing past is one that I am keen to avoid.
Life advice from those entering the latter years of their life typically emphasises 'making the most of it'.
I think what they are getting at is this: Accumulate novel experiences to enrich your life and extend the perception of time.
A longer life is possible, and you don’t need pills and potions to achieve it. All you need is to do some cool, memorable shit.