Why Time is Speeding Up (And What to Do About It)

Ironman Arizona, 2005. I was running the back half of the course, feeling good, and then I hit the hill and my world just... shrunk. I couldn't do math. I couldn't think past the next 20 yards. Everything outside that narrow tunnel went dark.

It was terrifying. I thought I was in trouble. But I finished.

By my final Ironman 14 years later, I'd turned it into a strategy. I wasn't trying to get to mile 26.2. I only needed to get to mile 24. Because I knew that by the time I got there, I'd be so locked in that the last two miles would take care of themselves.

I had taken the thing that had been my weakness and built an entire race plan around it (1st place Age Group and my fastest IM ever if you have to ask).

What changed wasn't my fitness. It was my relationship with focus. Developing this skill athletically has helped me far beyond the finish line.

Trap 1: things take longer now.

Running 10 miles takes more out of me than it did at 35. Recovery costs two days instead of one. Learning something new takes more reps. Making a significant decision? It takes more deliberation...because I've seen more ways things go wrong.

I'm still doing all the same things. But the time cost of each thing has gone up.

And when the things you do take longer, time feels like it's moving faster.

Think about it as a ratio. When you're 10, a single summer is 10% of your entire life. At 50, a summer is 2% of your life. Your brain compresses familiar experiences. That same summer feels like three weeks, not eight!

Add in the accumulation of each activity and you get the sensation of acceleration.

Most people respond by trying to do more. More efficiency. More optimization. More productivity hacks. That's the wrong answer.

Packing more in doesn't slow time down. It speeds it up. Days blur together. Weeks become indistinguishable.

The real problem is deeper. When you're in constant motion, you stop noticing things. The texture of a Tuesday. The quality of a conversation. The feeling of the world around you as you move through it.

Those are the things that make time feel rich. They make your life richer. And they require presence.

Trap 2: thinking in big blocks.

As I've gotten older, I've started thinking in 5 to 10 year arcs. What's wrong with that you say? Longer thinking is often better thinking.

But there's a cost. When you're mentally living in 5-year blocks, the day in front of you It is just a rounding error. It is the smallest possible unit in a much larger plan.

And if every day is interchangeable, they all blur together.

The antidote: shrink the window.

This is what the Ironman run taught me.

You can't think about the finish line when you're 40 miles from it and your legs are starting to go. Zoom out to the full distance and it's demoralizing. You have to focus on the next aid station. The next telephone pole. The next manhole cover.

It's not that the big picture doesn't matter. It's because the big picture is made of a thousand small moments, and the small moments are the only thing you can actually do something about.

I used to think that narrowing was a sign I was struggling. Now I know it's a sign I'm competing.

The framework I'm using now.

At the start of each week, three questions:

1. What is the one thing I can do this week for my health that I will actually do?
2. What is the one thing I can do this week for a relationship that matters?
3. What is the one thing I can do this week that moves my most important work forward?

Not lists. Not goals. One thing each. Specific. Completable this week.

Then I do them.

It doesn't stop time from accelerating. But it changes the experience of it. Instead of watching weeks blur past, you have a handful of moments each week where you were actually there, doing the thing that mattered.

That's my mile 24 strategy applied to life.

You don't have to get to the end to win the game. You have to get to the next thing.

By the time you get there, you'll know what to do next.