How To Slow Down Time: A Decision-Making Superpower
Once upon a time, I dated a guy who was terrible to endure at restaurants. No, he wasn’t rude to the waitstaff.
He was profoundly indecisive.
Something about the combination of receiving the menu upon sitting down and needing to make a meal decision within minutes froze him in his place. He lost all sense and ability to answer the question “What do I want?”
Inevitably, he would choke out some order with panic in his eyes, and immediately regret it. It was painful to watch him suffer over such a minor decision, simply because a timeline had been imposed on him.
While most of us are fine with ordering food at a restaurant, many of us do struggle when we are asked to make an important decision in a short amount of time. Whether it is buying a house, accepting a job, or taking advantage of a time-sensitive sale - feeling like we don’t have enough time has a way of turning our senses upside down.
Why do we struggle and how can we fix it?
At least once a week, someone calls me in a panic to discuss the game-changing yet last-minute decision they are concerned about making. The tension and panic in their voice is usually palpable. Even though they don’t say it, I can practically hear the voice inside of their head screaming, “YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!!!!”
When we receive information that requires us to make any decision, ideally we move through these three stages in the order they are listed:
Processing our reaction to what we have just learned.
Organizing the new information alongside our thoughts and feelings about it.
Solving the problem or question at hand.
However, when we feel crunched for time, many of us try to skip straight to the third step and start searching frantically for solutions. Ultimately, this is not fruitful. So, we backpedal a little and start organizing and processing on the fly - becoming impatient with ourselves as we feel even more confused.
Time ticks by. The deadline approaches. We feel the pressure and become more panicked.
This is why one of the greatest decision-making skills you can cultivate is the ability to slow down time. Don’t worry if you didn’t get your Hogwarts letter in the mail - you don’t have to be a wizard to master this skill.
All you need to do is carry out some practical applications of mindfulness, presence, and awareness when faced with a decision to make. Here are two of my favorites:
Zoom in on time
Let’s say you’ve just received a job offer and you have to let them know in two days whether or not you will be accepting. In that two day period there is so much you need to figure out - moving costs, apartment costs in the new city, how much you can reasonably afford, if your current job has a counter offer, etc.
It can be easy to immediately slip into panic about this seemingly short timeline. Two days to figure out all of that?! Obviously there is no time to engage in thoughtful decision-making, right?
Wrong.
When we are given a seemingly short amount of time to make a decision, it’s incredibly important that we take a moment and really examine how much time we have. Two days is 48 hours. 48 hours is 2880 minutes.
If I told you that you had 2880 minutes to make a decision, would you be willing to spare 60 of them to slow down and process your feelings about it? Would you have 60 more minutes to organize your thoughts about it?
I certainly would! That still leaves 2760 minutes to solve the problem at hand.
When we are able to get present, there is so much time in each day. But sometimes, the battle lies within the process of getting present itself. For me, the act of actually calculating how much time lives inside a larger section of time allows me to retain a sense of control and grace as I endeavor to make my decision.
Ask for more time. Or at least know that you can.
In grade school, we were all given assignments with a built in deadline. There was no wiggle room. There were rarely exceptions. The due date was the due date and we needed to comply or get a bad grade. Perhaps some of us had the courage to ask for an extension - and it wasn’t granted.
While this style of deadline establishment and enforcement is built to teach kids valuable lessons about responsibility and time-management - it doesn’t create a helpful reference point for us as adults.
As an adult, your time gets to have a voice… if you let it. You are allowed to negotiate timelines and deadlines that work for you. You are allowed to speak up when someone asks something of you that just isn’t going to be possible.
And yet, so many of us don’t ask.
So many of us, when faced with an external deadline, revert back to being the child in the classroom and quietly accept the date that has been handed to us - even if it causes us an extraordinary amount of stress.
This is particularly important when you are paying for an item or service. I speak to so many people who have found themselves on the receiving end of a marketing tactic that uses time to exert pressure.
When they anxiously explain to me that they only have 12 hours to make a multi-thousand dollar decision that didn’t exist before - one of my first questions is “did you ask for more time.” 99% of the time, that question is met with an incredulous “No! They were clear when they said 12 hours!”
But did you ask?
It’s really quite simple - if you are feeling stressed out about a deadline, ask for more time. Or at least know that the option is there.
While it’s not a guarantee that your request will be positively received, it most likely will. And more importantly you will have spoken up for yourself. You will have stepped out of the victim role into the owner role - giving yourself a greater sense of control and knowing that you have got this.
Whether you have 2 hours or 2 days to make an important decision - you likely have exactly enough time. Don’t try to fast forward through it to get to the solution part!
Slow down. Settle into each second of every minute ahead. And before you know it, time will have slowed down to meet you.