This is the last week of school for my kids in the Austin area before summer. For the life of me, I can't figure out how it's already summer. I'm pretty certain it was JUST new year's day two weeks ago.
It feels like after the pandemic time stopped having real meaning.
Kronos, the Greek word from time and where we get "chronological" from, is that quantitative time that is measured by seconds, minutes, and hours. It is linear and remorseless. It doesn't stop. The seconds keep ticking away.
We measure chronos time with clocks, watches, and the moon's phases.
Kronos doesn't speed up or slow down. Time marches on.
But you know that saying "everyone has the same 24 hours in a day?"
That's one of those shame-driving sentiments to make you think about your life and compare it with Elon Musk or Oprah and try to figure out how they can do all they do while you're looking at your upcoming birthday wondering why you didn't start seven businesses, send people to Mars and run a media empire in the last 10 years.
That's because of Kairos.
Kairos is the qualitative time that is indeterminate and measured by significant moments.
It is numinous (that's a new word I learned; definition here.) and creative, and is what they call "deep time".
Kairos time is a seasonal, cyclic kind of time that can be experienced when we are lost in an activity and suddenly realize how much time has passed.
Cindy Lustig, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, says the perception of time is influenced by memory and how much you’ve experienced.
“Our brains are designed to record change,” said Adrian Bejan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University and the author of “Time And Beauty: Why Time Flies And Beauty Never Dies.”
As adults, “the brain receives fewer images than it was trained to receive when young,” Bejan said. Therefore, we feel like time went by more quickly.
In other words, there are physiological factors at play that influence our perception of time ― namely, the older we get, the faster it feels.
Bejan says one way to slow down time is to experience things that are new and out of your usual regimen.
This could mean picking up a childhood hobby (like dancing or violin), taking an overnight trip to a city you’ve never visited or signing up for a cooking class. Learning new things is a good way to make your time feel longer when you look back on your life, he said.
Bejan stressed the adage “variety is the spice of life”: you should get out of your routine and take advantage of the time you have, which will only help make you feel like your year had more time to fill, he said.
Living a routine-only life makes the year fly really fast, he added.
This sentiment ties right into my recent thoughts on Blanding.
Blanding speeds up time.
Time spent in homogenous airports, on dull and interchangeable airplanes, in standardized hotel rooms, and at events that all look the same make time speed up.
We we create events for our attendees that feel just like every other event they're going to, we are responsible for speeding time up for them, too.
When I reflect back on this year, the moments that stand out are my trip to Scottsdale for our Club Ichi monthly lunch where we learned how to make short form video content (which I have still not embraced...).
February is a blur because we didn't host a monthly lunch and the entire month feels like it didn't happen. Proof to me that we HAVE to do something each month.
March brought out SXSW Experience Crawl, which is a stand-out moment for me. April took us to Miami for our graffiti lessons in the Lynwood Art District.
And May was our workshop (last week) in New Jersey where we made some new friends and got to push our creative brains in a "corporate" way.
This is why we double-down on those crazy experiences and behind-the-scenes lessons with our Club Ichi events.
You can get a keynote, breakout, and expo anywhere.
But you only float on a unicorn in the Adriatic Sea at Club Ichi.
You coming on the yacht in October?
THAT'S gonna be some serious Kairos.
Sources:
Comments