I recently went on walk with myself and started narrating my own life from as far back as I could remember. It was raining, but the light kind — spring taps on my rain jacket. I still haven’t bought an umbrella yet. I walked about 4 miles until I got to present day. There were years that I narrated for an entire neighborhood’s distance and years where it felt sufficient to summarize it into a couple dozen steps. In other words, there were years where nothing really happened and there were singular weeks that determined most parts of my life today.

First, I realized that the segments of my life were divided unevenly. It wasn’t in years. Or even boyhood, childhood, adulthood. There wasn’t much to discuss for pre-conscious me. I did distinctly remember my consciousness moment though, lying in bed in my grandparent’s home when I realized I, as a human, made real choices. Other inflection point moments were crystal clear, even if they weren’t obvious in the moment. I remember when I moved homes and left my childhood friends without saying goodbye. I remember when my father was hit by a reckless driver and I saw his limp body on the ground on social media before learning about the accident. And then onwards, it was greatly segmented into semesters until I graduated college. The 2 years of COVID-19 were rather interesting. When I was quarantined at home, it felt like nothing really happened at all. The second half, where I did a roadtrip across the US, it felt like I transformed as a human in a few months.

Now, time does not feel real. Sometimes I catch myself speaking to others — “Oh yeah I just graduated recently”, but that’s just not true anymore. It has been more than a year. At a certain point, my identity as a recent grad is untruthful. I saw something on YouTube that was like when you were 4 years old, your memory of the year is 1/4 of your lifespan. At 22, that year is 1/22. So that’s why your memory of life gets shorter with each passing year. Week after week it feels like forever, but I swear last summer was only recently. I feel like I’ll blink and I’ll be 30. So I’m thinking a lot about how to slow time down.

Notes on how to slow down time:

1. Meditation — 1 minute feels like eternity
2. Ab workouts — 5 minutes feels like eternity
3. Running — the last 10 minutes feels like eternity
4. Sickness — not something I would purposefully do, but I do look at sickness as a way life forces me to be grateful of a regular 24hr day
5. Plane rides — I stopped watching movies and I can’t sleep on them, so it’s pretty much forced boredom. Good for me sometimes.
6. New places — the 48 hours I spend in a new city feels like weeks
7. Big events — holidays, concerts, big life changes

Looking at this list, I would like to be more methodical about the ways I try new and hard things in my life. I look back on the first year of adulthood and I have truly many first-times: decorating a home, first full time job, writing for myself, fine dining, ceramics, run clubs, hosting dinner parties, golf, etc.

Another way is to do things in less time. Urgency. As much I try to fight time, eventually I will be 30. I make it sound like my life will be over. But I just don’t want to have regret over my 20s. If I knew my “Young, dumb, and broke pass” would disappear so fast, I would’ve held on tighter. More than ever, the time in the day to get what I want done slips away. Maybe what I’m concerned of is whether I achieve the goals that matter to me in this decade.

The time will pass anyways. You can’t always do things that slow down time. New experiences are only new once. So why not get the small, compounding things right? Everyday, I work really hard on problems that I will probably forget. Day by day, mundane tasks feel useless, it feels like no progress is being made in my life. But when you look back, everything does look different. Just because it’s taking time does not mean what you wanted is not happening. With the courage to start and the will to endure, victory is guaranteed.

Notes on being time-efficient:

1. Do it now, without all the information. Most things are reversible.
2. Set a realistic time block for everything.
3. Plan ahead, so you can sprint directly toward that direction.
4. Aim for effectiveness instead of completion.
5. You can always move faster than you think.

On my long narrated walk, I did have one big takeaway over the years. Every single event in my life that lingered impossibly far in the future came crashing down faster than I could prepare. High school, prom, graduation, my first job, my first family death. Time marches on and waits for no one.