"We talk about time at work as if it's a fixed resource: something outside of us and something we either "manage well" or "never have enough of." People genuinely believe the clock is the problem. But the more you look at how the brain processes experience, the less true this becomes. People don't feel pressured because they have too many tasks. They feel pressured because their brain is constructing time in a way that makes everything feel urgent or impossible to catch up with."
"Modern neuroscience has been pointing to this for a while. Our experience of time-what feels fast, slow, overwhelming, or "not enough"-is not a reading from an internal stopwatch. It's a story the brain builds using prediction, memory, emotional state, and identity. In other words: your brain doesn't observe time. Your brain generates it. Or we can say it another way. The brain predicts time, not measures it."
"When your system is stable and regulated, your internal sense of time widens. You can think clearly, make decisions from the part of your brain built for problem-solving, and move through your day without constantly feeling behind. In contrast, when you're stressed or mentally overloaded, the brain speeds everything up. Time "contracts" and you lose the feeling of agency."
People treat time at work as an external fixed resource, but subjective time is generated by the brain. The brain predicts time using patterns, context, memory, sensory information, emotion, and identity rather than measuring it like a stopwatch. Internal time estimates expand when the nervous system is regulated, enabling clear thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and a sense of agency. Internal time contracts under stress and mental overload, making tasks feel urgent, rushed, and impossible to catch up with. External calendars remain unchanged while subjective temporal experience shifts with internal state, producing sensations of not having enough time.
Read at Fast Company
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