The Optimal Way of Experiencing Time

Is there an optimal way? We can check our own experiences. What was your experience of time during peak experiences, the best moments or periods of your life? During peak love or meditation experiences; during peak productivity; or best sports performances? Think about this for a couple of minutes before reading on.

 

I've asked thousands of people the question above. They say something close to: "Time doesn't flow then, at least not in the 'normal' way. I'm either not aware of time passing at all, or it seems to go fast, but without a feeling of being out of control." So during their best moments, they're not feeling time in 'the standard' way, when it's passing and its passing is out of control, making us anxious. Things are happening, which is 'event time', yet 'felt time' doesn't have an arrow--it doesn't have a sense of flowing in a particular direction.

The things that we really enjoy and get involved in are 'over before we know it'--this kind of 'felt time' is often called 'timelessness'. When we're completely absorbed in something, totally engaged or preoccupied, there's a sense of being very present with what's at hand, and time doesn't seem to pass in the 'standard' way. Timelessness is a kind of 'felt time' that actually doesn't seem to 'pass' at all.

As Maslow reported from his research, there is "the frequent report, especially by lovers, of the complete loss of extension in time. It is as if they had, in a way, some place in another world in which time simultaneously stood still and moved with great rapidity." (p. 76, Toward a Psychology of Being) And, as described by Linda S. Ackerman, for the peak performer there is "a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which he is in control of his actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment, between stimulus and response, or between past, present, and future." (pp. 125-6, "The Flow State: A New View of Organizations and Managing," in Transforming Work, ed. Adams)

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