The Not So Quiet Acceleration Of Time
I’ve now heard it three separate times, from three different sources:
time is accelerating.
Of course, that sounds wrong. Time doesn’t speed up.
But our experience of it does.
I had the rare privilege of living on both sides of the internet.
In the 1980s, a day had edges.
You left the house. You came back when the streetlights came on.
There were pauses built into life.
A newspaper sat on the kitchen table.
Someone had to get up to change the television channel.
Cookouts at Eva’s felt like they lasted ten hours, even if they were only half a day.
Now everything hums along.
You wake up, check your phone instantly, and move through routines that blur together.
Before you can name what happened, another month—or season—is gone.
Time didn’t change.
We did.
There are at least three forces driving this:
1. The Routine Loop
Repetition compresses memory. When days look the same, the brain encodes less detail.
Fewer details mean fewer markers.
Fewer markers make time feel shorter in retrospect.
Routine is efficient—but it can make life feel invisible.
2. The Weight of Constant Input
We now process more information in a day than prior generations did in months.
Slack. Teams. Texts. Email. Social feeds.
Your nervous system never gets a clean “end.”
It stays slightly activated—vigilant—all day.
3. The Phone Trap
Scrolling is time without memory.
It fills space but leaves no imprint.
An hour passes, but it doesn’t feel lived.
There used to be boredom.
And boredom had a purpose.
Commercial breaks. Waiting. Quiet.
These were not empty moments—they were where time expanded.
From an ACT perspective, this isn’t about eliminating phones or routines.
It’s about noticing.
Are you living in a way that aligns with what matters to you?
Or are you being pulled by what is immediate, easy, and endless?
⏳ Small shifts can widen time again:
Add novelty to your routine (take a different route, change one habit)
Create hard stops for input (no news before 10 am, none after 7pm)
Set boundaries with your phone (intentional use, not default use)
Build moments of presence (a walk without input, a conversation without interruption)
Don’t multitask
These aren’t productivity hacks.
They are ways of restoring texture to your life.
For your patients, this becomes powerful psychoeducation:
reducing constant input and increasing present-moment awareness can lower baseline anxiety, improve emotional regulation, and restore a sense of control—without adding another medication.
Time is not something you spend.
It is something you experience.
This is not easy work.
But it may be one way to feel like you have more of it.
Next week, we’ll explore a return to analog—
and which patients might benefit most from stepping back from the devices that are quietly worsening their symptoms.