You Have An Incorrect Perception Of Time (And So Do I)

My old roommate is a personal trainer. 

When we lived together, he used to ask if I wanted to work out with him. I think he learned how to tell when I was stressed, because the times he always asked me to work out were when I was the busiest. He knew a workout would help me unwind, and feel better. 

The trouble was, I don’t like spending too much time working out. He always used to pitch me on a quick workout routine. A few times through a circuit that only took 35 minutes or so. But I knew that 35 minutes really meant 45 minutes, and that he wasn’t accounting for the changing time, the travel time, the warm up time, the cool down time, (or all the breaks I needed to take). 

I’m wondering if there’s an inverse correlation between how much we love something and our perception of how much time it takes.

A Major League baseball game takes an average of 3 hours, which is a very different experience for me than it is for my wife. Those 3 hours fly by for me, but she’s scrolling Instagram by the 6th inning. 

When we love something, time flies by. When we don’t love it, time crawls. This is because time is our most valuable resource–it’s non-renewable, and no one knows how much time they really have. 

We need to be realistic about how much time things take, whether we love them or hate them. The life you live and the person you become is largely dictated by how you spend your time.