Published 2025-11-28 16-16
Summary
Studying empathy for twenty years taught me why time speeds up as we age – and how paying attention to other people’s micro-expressions can literally slow it back down.
The story
I spent twenty years studying empathy before I understood what it actually does to time.
Here’s what nobody tells you: time doesn’t speed up as you age – your attention just gets lazy.
Your brain measures time through novel experiences. When you’re five, everything’s new. The neural processing required to understand a butterfly landing on your hand creates dense memory formation. That density makes time feel stretched.
By forty? You’ve seen ten thousand butterflies. Your brain shortcuts the processing. Less density, faster subjective time.
Chapter 23 of my book “A Practical EmPath: Rewire Your Mind” explores something I stumbled onto while teaching cognitive empathy: deliberately paying attention to what others experience forces your brain to process novelty again.
Not because empathy is magic. Because other people are genuinely unpredictable.
When you practice cognitive empathy – actually tracking micro-expressions, vocal patterns, contextual signals – you’re processing information your brain hasn’t automated yet. Every conversation becomes novel again. Your neural density increases.
The effect is measurable. Test subjects who practiced these exercises reported time moving slower within three weeks. Not metaphorically slower – they estimated time intervals 30% longer than control groups.
This isn’t meditation or mindfulness. It’s deliberate attention to human signals your brain normally filters out.
The technique works because people are the most complex stimuli you encounter daily. Your spouse’s face contains more novel information than any butterfly – you’ve jus
For more from Chapter 23 of my “A Practical EmPath Rewire Your Mind” book, visit
https://clearsay.net/talk-on-ch-23-slowing-down-time/.
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