This book by broadcaster and psychology lecturer Claudia Hammond is an enthralling read into the way we think about time.
I’m fascinated by this as a concept, as it impacts the way we see and perceive the world and what happens around us and is particularly relevant when we consider change in all its forms. Time can shape how we remember things and equally, how we think forward to the future.
The book begins with the story of Chuck Berry, a New Zealand skydiver and base jumper and his perception of time. Having completed a couple of tandem skydives I can vividly recall the feeling of how much time slowed hugely when I was in freefall – around 30 seconds before the parachute was opened - felt like at least 5 minutes. I became acutely aware of everything going on around me.
My wedding day on the other hand felt like it raced by, and I have that same feeling of it whizzing by in a blur even when I recall it, over ten years later.
This is one of the key messages I took away from this book. Our experience of passing time varies hugely depending on the circumstances we’re in. Plus, our moods and how healthy we are, can all play a part too.
This becomes even more fascinating when we deal with things which are way off in the future – like climate change. Our brains – which apparently have no one area that measures the passing of hours and minutes – were originally developed to deal with the very short-term challenges of finding food and avoiding being someone else’s food. Much of that evolutionary development has not progressed too much further, so thinking about something that will happen in a future time period, can be hard.
Hammond explores all manner of time-related topics, from why it is that time speeds up as we get older and how we ‘see’ time in our minds – which is particularly fascinating. She explores examples from others (including Viktor Frankl) and how they use their minds to focus on a future time, rather than the past, to help them work through whatever’s going on in their present.
This is a brilliant book. It made me realise how critical time is in our lives and how it’s so much more than just a clock. Things like how we speak – the millisecond nuances in our voices that can create different responses from people – and how we understand the passing of time without a clock – all absolutely fascinating.
As we face change at an increasingly rapid pace, understanding how time affects us is a valuable perspective. This book will give you some unexpected and refreshing insights, shares some fabulous examples from a host of different people and situations and most of all, really makes you think.