Why time feels like it's flying
Roman, today I want to talk about what your days feel like they're flying past. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our long changes? That is the question, a disc podcast, will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch, and welcome to the Rowman Podcast. Hello you beautiful old man and welcome back to another old man cycling podcast. So today I want to talk to you about what your days feel like they're flying past. And this podcast is kind of a came up because they're just too common that I heard thrown out by two different people. was a child of one of my friends and he was musing about how long a journey took. He's like, oh, I felt like I was in the car all day. And he was joking with it. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? And then another one of my friends who's in his 50s, and he was reflecting back on the last couple of years, pandemic years, and he said, where did time go? And it just got me reflecting on the difference in the perception of time from a junior to the difference of a perception of time when you guess, you know, as your age, not even a specific age, as your age, because the thing is with time, we just, we can't buy an extra minute of us. No matter how wealthy we are, you know, the wealthiest people in the world can't buy an extra minute. It's a completely non replenishing resource. So our perception of time is super important. And there's a cool story I heard you today and it's someone was saying to you, well, how much would I like $10 million? I was like, I would obviously like $10 million quite a lot. And he said, would you take 10 million dollars if you didn't wake up tomorrow? And obviously for anyone listening, I would imagine the answer is no. I definitely wouldn't take 10 million dollars to wake up tomorrow. So the logic here is the 10 million dollars then is less valuable to you than waking up tomorrow. But why don't we act like that? Why don't we act that waking up tomorrow is a gift? And I just thought that was a funny story and that coupled with the two musings from my two friends just sort of sent me on this journey about how we perceive time and because protecting time has been a journey for me and I used to want to try and figure everything out when I started in cycling I wanted to try and figure everything out myself cycling coaching I wanted to figure it out and then when I started business I wanted to figure it out and then even when I niched inside business like figuring out Facebook ads I had to figure it out myself but once I spent time figuring that out, that's time I never get back. So I've made that shift in the last few years now to asking not the question of how do I do this, how do I do cycling coaching, how do I build a business, but who can who can coach me in cycling, who can coach me in building businesses, who can run my Facebook ads, making that shift from hell to who frees up so much time, it's unbelievable.
Novelty and goals slow time
But how can you slow down your perception of time? So there's an interesting study that I heard about recently from Robert Lechman and his paper is called the Perception of Acceleration of Time with Aging. And this is the idea that our perceived duration of time decreases as a mathematical proportion to how long we've been alive. For example, a month feels like longer when you're only four years old because it's making up a sizable percentage of your life as opposed to a month when you're 50 years old because because a month makes up a much smaller percentage of your life when you're 50 years old. But unfortunately, for us, there's nothing we can do about the age we are. So although age seems to affect our perception of time, it's a variable we can't control. But luckily, there are two order variables which we can control which changes our perception of time. And one of them is novelty. This is really interesting because my anecdotal experiences of this are just so true. It takes our brain longer to figure out the process and to sort through novel tasks. This is another one of the reasons the childhood stretches on for ages because everything is new. We're learning to write, we're learning to read, we're learning what colors are, we're learning tasks, everything is new. But at some point we have very little novelty in our lives. We have a lot of mundane routines, commute to work, in work, execute mundane tasks. life lies past when you're not incorporating novel experiences into your day. So tip one if you want to slow down the perception of time is incorporate novelty into your life, into your routine and to smash that routine up. This could be as simple as taking new roots on the bike, exploring a new restaurant once a week, going on a date to a different place with your partner once a week, or even branching out and meeting new friends or new riding buddies. Get that novelty and integrate it into your life. And the second tip for changing your perception of time and how time speeds, it's setting and making progress towards goals. So making small steps towards your goal, it's been shown to create these mental checkpoints and you can look back on these mental checkpoints and it seems to differentiate long unbroken passages of time and again anecdotally when I read this, this is definitely true for me because I can remember building Roman is 10 years old this year, believe it or not, 10 years cycling, coaching. But I can remember in even the last 12 months, we've made such massive progress behind the scenes with horror and new staff, hitting certain revenue targets, certain listener targets on the podcast. And each of those were such important key performance indicators for us that I look back on them and they do serve as those mental checkpoints that the last 12 months seems so long. And I contrast that to friends who in the pandemic period, they just say, oh, it flew past. I blinked in the last two years, went. But that hasn't been my experience at all. The last two years has felt like it's lasted 10 years because of these mental checkpoints.
Patreon support and sign-off
So setting and making progress towards your goals is super, super important. I just thought there were two interesting musings on how we slow time. And I wanted to share I want you today, good road man. Thank you for listening. Do all those good things because if you're enjoying the podcast I don't encourage a lot and a lot of podcasts that I listen to do it at nauseum and it's off button But just because I don't mention it doesn't diminish the importance of it like the patreon is the lifeblood of this podcast That's over on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch that pays for all the hoax and costs and it means You know the podcast isn't at a loss You'll notice I still haven't taken on a sponsor and the reason I haven't taken on a sponsor is I want to deliver Unfiltered content to you guys. I want to give you my actual opinion if I take on a sponsor of you know a pair of You know, I'll give a stupid example of a pair of overshoes that approach me a company If I take them on as a podcast sponsor, and I say these are the best overshoes in the world because they're paying me to say that It's disingenuous And if you know I'm misrepresenting the truth about those overshoes, you'll start to question my opinion on everything else. So I don't want to misrepresent anything to you, the listener, who's taken and devoting your precious resource time to listen to this podcast. So for that reason, I haven't taken on a sponsor, which makes the Patreon super important. And all the other stuff, like just liking, you know, pokes on putting up on social, reviewing and sharing the podcast, wherever you're listening to it and sending it into WhatsApp groups and all that good stuff. Roadman I've blabbed on long enough. Thanks for listening today. I'm gonna chat you again real soon Hey Roadman, it's Anthony again just before you head off real quick. I just want to mention the Roadman blueprint It's the ultimate coaching package. It's four months long. It's four months of one-on-one coaching sessions Which are own professional roadman cycling coach? It's four months of strength and conditioning plans So you never need to worry about is this strength and conditioning plan aligned with my cycling goals It's four months of nutrition plans to fuel all that. It's four months of boil hacks, which you know I love so much. And I'm getting to pick the brain of all these experts and it's four months of motivation to make sure you never miss a session. And every single session, you hit it with commitment and with purpose. The whole package, it's 997 euro. I have a limited number of places on the roadman blueprint. If you're interested in getting started, pop me an email and add me in at roadman, cycling, This is the ultimate coaching package for those looking to take their cycling and performance to the next level.