Want Life To Feel Longer? Do These Simple Brain Tricks

A revolutionary system for expanding your experience of time

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” — Vicki Corona

Where were you when 9/11 happened?

When the planes crashed into the towers.

When American life changed forever.

Picture it.

Really remember it.

Can you believe that was twenty years ago this September?

Two decades.

Where did those 240 months… 1,043 weeks… 7,305 days go?

You know the saying:

Time flies.

Or as the horse-loving Spanish say: El tiempo corre.

Time runs.

Time runs even faster when every day looks the same.

Because the human brain doesn’t measure life in time, but in moments.

And the human brain just isn’t interested in sameness.

So it compresses the files.

Sameness = time compression.

For wage workers slaving for the corporate man, entire decades can disappear in a blink of the eye.

Most people are fast-forwarding through life like Adam Sandler in Click.

The good news?

The opposite applies.

The brain loves newness.

It expands the files.

Newness = time expansion.

I’ve driven across Canada five times for work.

Do you know what part I barely remember?

The Prairies.

They’re boring, flat, and straight.

Do you know what part I’ll never forget?

The Rockies.

They’re full of hot springs and bighorn sheep and gut-curdlingly-steep mountain roads. Also black bears.

Life needs Rocky Mountain moments.

To be sure, our brains are wired for rootedness and stability — it’s not healthy to spend our lives as refugees or permanent travelers — but our brains do love a good bit of surprise every once in a while.

As the Edward J. Stieglitz quote goes:

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

Here’s the secret to making life feel long:

Once each quarter, take 3–7 days and go somewhere you’ve never been, to do something you’ve never done, ideally with people you’ve never met.

The book that is your life needs chapter breaks — little jolts of newness amidst all that comfortable predictability.

The further outside your comfort zone and level of familiarity, the better.

Get really creative and go wild with this.

Here are some of the moment-makers I’ve experienced:

• Spending New Year’s in North Korea.
• Practicing silence at a monastery in northern Scotland.
• Pretending to be medieval in a friend’s ancient Cotswold cottage.
• Managing to get a private audience with Pope Francis and have lunch at the Vatican.

None of these experiences lasted more than a few days, but they loom as large as some years in my mind.

Tonight, my wife and I are heading out for a weekend of hiking on the mountain where the bluestones of Stonehenge originated. We’re booked to stay at a monastic sanctuary I’ve never stayed at before. We’re scheduled to have an outdoor breakfast with two people I barely know and one I’ve never met. My guess is that the next two days will loom as large as any two months in 2021.

And don’t worry, these regularly scheduled moment-making trips don’t have to be expensive.

In a few weeks, my wife and I are heading to the south coast for a weeklong babymoon while caring for a few chickens at a friend of a friend’s house while they’re away. You can easily house swap with a friend, family member, or complete stranger via one of the many house swap sites out there.

The key is that you have to be totally present in a totally new situation to create a Rocky Mountain moment.

So ditch your laptop.

Put your camera away.

(I don’t even own a cell phone.)

Just be in the moment.

Just.

Be.

Want to expand time even further?

Every 12–24 months, take a full month or longer and re-locate to a new cultural context. Here are some of our favorite work-away trips:

• Two months in Florida at my wife’s grandparents’ condo while developing a screenplay.
• One month at Oxford for a publishing course.
• Six months on Vancouver Island to intern with one of my favorite authors.
• Three months wintering in Wales to write a book.

Each of these stints feels like an extra year or more in our brains.

I’m only 35, but I’ve traveled to forty countries, visited 300+ cities, met thousands of people. I feel like I’m eighty… in a good way.

Again, this doesn’t have to be expensive. We volunteered our way through all seven Central American countries over a period of five months for less than $5,000 total. (That’s right… it was cheaper than “real life” back home, and we’ll remember it forever.) In fact, the more creative and flexible you’re willing to be — which drastically increases uncertainty — the better chance of creating Rocky Mountain moments.

There’s one more crucial piece to making life feel long:

Your memory.

You’ve got to keep your brain sharp.

If you can’t remember the highlights, life will always feel like a quick blur.

But if you keep your brain in shape, you’ll allow your time-expanded moments to take root and it will make life feel long and full.

The big three brain-builders for me are:

Eat healthy fats

• Hoover avocados.
• Take shots of MCT like you’re on spring break in Cancun.
• Add coconut oil to everything.
• Spread pâté on sardines.

Wear a rearview mirror

• Make space to regularly reflect on the good times.
• Definitely keep a journal. (I write a minimum of one sentence per day.)
• My wife and I regularly remember and reminisce on our nightly star saunters.
• We stud our desks, bookshelves, and kitchen with mementos and fridge magnets.
• My wife also makes Shutterfly coffee table scrapbooks for each unique season of our life. It’s a tradition started by her mom — those two can invest a whole evening in taking a walk down memory lanes.

Sleep a ton

It might seem counterintuitive, but spending less time awake actually makes life feel longer.

Why?

Because sleep consolidates memories.

If you have a really good day and want to remember it for the rest of your life, sleep on it.

It’s heartbreaking to think of how many people barely remember their wedding day or the first few years of their child’s life because they were sleep-deprived.

It’s sad to think that most people are just constantly rushing around, trying to experience life, but it’ll all be a blur in hindsight because they didn’t slow down and get the rest their bodies naturally needed.

Lock it in.

Want life to feel long?

Stop wasting time, pack your brain with memories, and find ways to hold on to your Rocky Mountain moments.

As Seneca said in On The Shortness of Life: “It is not that we have so little time, but that we waste so much. Life is long, if you know how to use it.

So do new stuff. Stuff your face with fat. Stuff your journal with memories. And stuff your face in a pillow 9+ hours a night.

That’s the stuff of life.

Now get out there and make a moment.

Follow Jared on Medium + subscribe to Improving Together.