The Experiment
“Explorer and scientist Christian Clot put on a pair of dark glasses and stepped out of the shadows into the bright sunshine. It was April 2021 and it had been forty days since Clot and his team had gone underground in the Grotte de Lombrives cave in south-west France, with the intention of isolating from normal life and time itself.”
“The group of eight men and seven women – including a jeweller, a nurse, a maths teacher – had locked themselves in the cave on 14th March as part of the research project. Led by Christian Clot, their goal was to live without clocks, daylight and outside contact to better understand how the human mind adapts to a timeless world – and learn more about its impact on our thoughts, feelings and ability to function.”
The Results
The volunteers lived in the cave with artificial lighting and separate, well-equipped, areas for sleeping, cooking, socializing, scientific work and toilet breaks. What they experienced in the cave was very strange. However, it was not realized until the end of the experiment.
Christian Clot said, “When people came to tell us that the forty days had finished, it was impossible for us to accept. In my mind only twenty-nine days had passed.” One volunteer said that they thought they had been there for only twenty-three days. On average the team thought that twenty-five per cent less time had passed.
A Shift In Time Perception
During their isolation they began to experience time in a very different way. Without watches, alarm-clocks or sunlight to signal them to do things, they settled into their own individual rhythms that were vastly out of synchronization with the normal twenty-four hour cycle. Data later showed that the volunteers were living, on average, thirty-two hour days; sleeping for twelve hours and staying awake for twenty hours. Some had a mind-boggling sixty hour cycle. Inside the cave, time was passing a lot faster than they imagined.
We have all experienced time appearing to speed-up or slow-down. This is because we measure time and perceive time in two very different ways. The Earth takes ‘a day’ to rotate on its axis – which we calculate as twenty-four hours – and one year to orbit around the sun – which we calculate at three-hundred and sixty-five and one quarter days [365.25 days]. Abert Einstein said, “time is relative,” and since different planets have difference orbits, it would make sense to say that time is not one thing. One year can seem like an eternity for a child, but by middle age, the years fly by.
The way we perceive time is very different to how we measure it. We can feel time is moving faster or slower depending on our mood, what we are doing, and how old we are. In some situations, like an accident, time can slow-down as if in slow-motion. In other situations, time can often seem to speed-up, such as when we are having fun or as we get older – a phenomenon that greatly affects our thinking.
Psychologist Peter Mangan tested this phenomenon of age related to time, by asking people of different ages to count out three minutes. People aged between nineteen and twenty-four years old, were very accurate with their estimates of counting. For them, ‘felt-time’ and ‘clock-time’ were roughly in synchronization. For people aged between sixty and eighty years old, three minutes and forty seconds passed before they estimated three minutes.
Reasons For The Shift
One explanation for this time difference – time acceleration as we age – is that a year becomes an ever smaller fraction of our total life lived that it becomes smaller and less significant as the years pass. Kit Yates, a senior lecturer in mathematical biology at the University of Bath, explained, “the period between your fifth and tenth birthdays, would appear to pass at the same rate as the decades between your fortieth and eightieth birthdays.”
Memory
Another theory, supported by data from the Clot’s experiment, suggests that time perception is closely related to memory. We do not just experience the passage of time as we live it – prospectively – we also experience it through our memories – retrospectively. The paradox is that it can feel like time is passing incredibly slowly while doing something boring, however, long periods of routine and mundane activity can seem to have flown past quickly, when we look back on our memories.
The relationship between time and memory is important because it can teach us more about how to feel more in control of our time, and that we are living fuller, more rewarding, more ‘memorable’ lives.
Think about the many ‘first’ new experiences as a child – smelling, touching, seeing, hearing, tasting – and all of that new information needs memory. As we age, life becomes familiar predictable and routine that there is less need for memory. Studies suggest that time appears to slow-down when we have more sensory inputs and make more memories.
Clot’s team of volunteers took MRI scans, which showed that the part of the brain related to memory – the hippocampus – had shrunk. Cut-off from information from the outside world, the volunteers remembered less. With few memorable moments to mark the passage of time, it felt like time had passed more quickly.
The Paradox
The great modern paradox is that even though we are surrounded by time-saving technologies, many people often feel that they are running out of time.
A Solution
There is something we can do about this. One thing is to be more childlike by try to resist needless routines and seek out unexpected and unusual experiences. This can be as simple as making small adjustments; taking a different route to work or home; eating something different for lunch. Other things might include writing a book, learning a new skill or instrument, learning a new language. Things that can be highly rewarding and can take us on great journeys in our mind. A walk in nature can also slow our perception of time. The more our minds have to process new information, the more time will seem to expand, and the longer and richer your life will seem in retrospect. We should also consider our relationship with clocks that dominate our lives.
“Removing obligations of normal life that can often cause stress, the brain is free to think and to see things,” said Christian Clot. Perhaps it is the obsession with time that is the real prison, and we can think more freely in its absence.
In an interview, one of the volunteers said, “For once in our lives, it was as if we could press pause. We are always in a rush in our lives. We had time and could stop to live and do our tasks. It was great.”
The Irony
It is ironic to think that when time is constantly present in our lives, we can feel like we do not have time. However, when time is non-longer present, it feels as though we have time. Of course this is because when we live in accordance to time constraints and obligations, we have no time for anything else in our lives.
Productivity
Another advantage of the effects of living without time, Clot said, was that they were not just happier, they were also more productive. Without time to tell them when they had to do things, they were able to focus more and for longer periods of time.
Final Thoughts
Christian Clot recommends taking one day a week to switch-off – cut-out using phones, emails and clocks. Instead of worrying about the next appointment, commitment or obligation, give yourself time to switch-off from everything. Give yourself time to pay attention, to focus on what is happening right now, to explore new places, to try new things and to think new thoughts. A life of new experiences and less boring routine, will soon seem longer.
Credits
The contents and information for this article have been extracted from the book, “Are You Thinking Clearly?” by Miriam Frankel & Matt Warren, and adapted for educational purposes.
