The frantic pace of modern life is damaging our sense of time, but nature can help us heal – new study

By Ricardo Correia, University of Turku

“How did it get so late so soon?” ― Dr. Seuss

In an increasingly competitive world, time is of the essence. Notions of productivity and timeliness have accelerated contemporary lifestyles to a dizzying, sometimes overwhelming pace, and our dependence on technology is doing little to help. As the clock grows to dominate the tempo of life, time itself seems to be increasingly fleeting. This is particularly true in large cities, where hours, days, and even weeks can sometimes seem to fly by in an instant.

Indeed, an increasing number of people report constantly feeling short of time. Such feelings of “time scarcity” emerge from how time is both used and perceived by people. Long working hours inevitably limit the time that people have available for other activities, but leading fast-paced lifestyles while packed into noisy, dynamic and crowded urban environments is mentally exhausting, and this can also influence how we perceive time.

In a recent publication, I propose that nature experiences offer a potential solution to the increasingly widespread feelings of time scarcity caused by contemporary urban lifestyles. This emerges from the unique nature of human time perception, which is highly subjective, and moulded by the experiences and environments in which we immerse ourselves.

Human sense of time

Human time perception — our sense of time — is made up of three key dimensions. One of these is temporal succession, meaning the way we perceive the order and overlap of different events. For instance, pressing a light switch and the light turning on may seem like simultaneous events, but we have the capacity to perceive the order in which they happen, and this helps us to make sense of the world around us.

Another dimension is temporal duration, or how we perceive and estimate the duration of an event. An afternoon spent in the tax office, for example, can seem to last forever, while the same amount of time spent in the company of friends can seem short and swift.

Full Story https://theconversation.com/the-frantic-pace-of-modern-life-is-damaging-our-sense-of-time-but-nature-can-help-us-heal-new-study-223998