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Psychology of Life (And How To Spend It Wisely) — Transcript

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0:00Quick one before we start. We put
0:01together work with your mind, the Psych
0:04Tunes manual for building discipline,
0:06staying calm, and learning faster, all
0:09backed by real research. Get your copy
0:11links in the description. When you were
0:13nine, one summer could last forever.
0:15Long afternoons, the same few streets,
0:18and days that seemed to stretch on with
0:19no end in sight. Now, ask anyone over 30
0:22where the last five years went and watch
0:23their face. They'll laugh, shake their
0:26head, and say the two words almost
0:28everyone ends up saying, "Time flies."
0:32But, here's what's strange. A year at 40
0:34has exactly as many days as a year at
0:36nine. The clock never sped up. So, why
0:39does time go by so fast now? And why
0:42does it feel like your life is slipping
0:43away while you're busy living it? Most
0:45people have the same answer. Life is
0:47short, so stop wasting yours. Make every
0:50second count. Wake up earlier, optimize
0:53your mornings, squeeze more into every
0:55hour. But, the psychology of life points
0:58somewhere almost nobody looks. Your life
1:01is moving at the same speed it always
1:03did. What changed is how much of it your
1:05mind keeps. Whole years are quietly
1:08disappearing from memory, and the people
1:10who work hardest to save time are often
1:12the ones losing the most of it. So, if
1:15you want to know how to spend your life
1:16wisely, start here. You've been
1:18measuring it with the wrong clock.
1:21Today on Psych Tunes, we're going to
1:23break down the psychology of life. How
1:25your mind actually measures the years
1:27you've lived, the three ways it quietly
1:30loses them, and how to spend the time
1:32you have left so it truly counts. Let's
1:34get started. In 2010, Daniel Kahneman,
1:37the psychologist who won a Nobel Prize
1:39for his work on how people make
1:41decisions, stood on a stage and made a
1:44claim that sounds almost absurd. Each of
1:46us, he said, is really two selves. The
1:49first is the experiencing self. It lives
1:52in the present, one moment at a time. It
1:55feels the cold coffee, the traffic, the
1:57jokes, the hugs. The second is the
2:00remembering self. It shows up afterward,
2:03looks back, and writes the story of what
2:05happened. And here's the uncomfortable
2:07part. When you decide whether this year
2:09was good, whether a relationship was
2:11worth it, or whether you wasted your
2:1320s, the experiencing self barely gets a
2:15vote. The remembering self answers those
2:18questions. It also makes most of your
2:20choices about the future, because you
2:22choose based on what you remember, not
2:24on what you actually lived. So, if you
2:27want to know how long your life feels,
2:29you have to ask how the remembering self
2:31keeps time. And it doesn't use a clock.
2:33It counts moments that stood out. A new
2:36place, a first conversation, something
2:38that surprised you. Each one leaves a
2:41mark. And when you look back, the marks
2:43are what tell you how much time has
2:45passed. More marks feel like more time.
2:48Fewer marks feel like less. The BBC
2:50broadcaster and psychology writer
2:52Claudia Hammond calls this the holiday
2:55paradox. Think about the last trip you
2:57took somewhere new. While you were
2:58there, the days flew by. Then you came
3:00home, and that one week felt huge, like
3:03you'd been gone for a month. Now think
3:05about an ordinary week at work. It drags
3:08while you're inside it, every afternoon
3:09crawling, and a month later you couldn't
3:11name a single thing that happened.
3:13Hammond's explanation is that we judge
3:15time twice, once while we're living it,
3:18and once when we look back, and the two
3:20judgments can point in opposite
3:22directions. Psychologists Dina
3:24Avni-Babad and Ilana Ritov at the Hebrew
3:26University of Jerusalem tested the
3:29looking back half directly. Across four
3:31experiments and two field studies, they
3:34compared time spent on something routine
3:37with time spent on something unfamiliar.
3:39Afterward, people remembered the routine
3:41stretch as shorter. Unfamiliar moments
3:43grab your attention, and what grabs your
3:45attention gets kept. Here's the simplest
3:48way to picture it. When your phone saves
3:50a video, it doesn't store every frame in
3:52full. It keeps what changes from one
3:54moment to the next and throws away
3:56whatever stays the same. That's why a
3:58long clip of an empty hallway barely
4:00takes up any space, while a few seconds
4:03of fireworks takes up a lot. Your memory
4:05does something similar. A day full of
4:07change gets saved in detail. A day
4:10identical to the one before gets
4:12compressed into almost nothing.
4:15And a year made of identical days can
4:17shrink to the size of a single weekend.
4:19That may be part of why childhood
4:21summers felt endless. So much was
4:23happening for the first time. To be
4:25fair, researchers still argue about why
4:27the years seem to speed up as we age. In
4:30a 2005 study of 499 people aged 14 to
4:3494, Mark Whitman and Sandra Lannehof
4:38found that hours, weeks, and months felt
4:42about the same at every age. Only the
4:44last 10 years felt faster as people got
4:46older, and that effect leveled off
4:48around 50. Not every study finds that
4:51memory explains it, and simply feeling
4:53rushed seems to play a part.
4:55But the core finding holds. Routine
4:58shrinks the time you remember. And that
5:00sets up three traps that quietly take
5:02years out of your life. Trap one, the
5:04repeat. Same alarm, same route to work,
5:08same lunch, same chair, same show in the
5:11evening, same scroll before bed. None of
5:13it is bad. It's actually efficient. You
5:16finally built a life that runs smoothly,
5:19where nothing surprises you, and nothing
5:21goes wrong. And then one day you look
5:23up, the year is almost over, and you
5:25honestly can't name one thing that
5:27happened in June. Your memory is doing
5:30exactly what it was built to do. Routine
5:32is how your mind saves energy. Once a
5:35day becomes predictable, there's nothing
5:37new to pay attention to, so there's
5:38nothing new to keep. 50 Tuesdays that
5:41look the same get compressed into one
5:43blurry Tuesday. You lived all 50. You'll
5:46remember one. That's the cost of the
5:48repeat. You still get every hour. What
5:51you lose is the evidence that you were
5:53there. A life built for efficiency can
5:55feel, looking back, like it barely
5:57happened. Trap two, the absent hour.
6:01You're at dinner with someone you love,
6:03they're telling you about their week,
6:05and you're nodding in the right places,
6:07but half of you is somewhere else.
6:10Replaying a message from your boss,
6:12drafting tomorrow's reply, glancing at
6:14the phone lying face down next to your
6:16plate. The dinner happens. You just
6:19aren't really at it. In 2010, Harvard
6:21psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and
6:23Daniel Gilbert built an iPhone app that
6:26checked in with about 2,250
6:28people at random moments during their
6:30day.
6:32It asked what they were doing, how they
6:34felt, and whether they were thinking
6:35about what they were doing or about
6:37something else. Their minds were
6:39somewhere else 46.9%
6:41of the time. That's nearly half of their
6:43waking life. And those wandering moments
6:46tended to be the less happy ones. The
6:48volunteers were iPhone owners who chose
6:50to download a happiness app, so it isn't
6:53a perfect picture of everyone. And while
6:54the timing of their answers suggested
6:56the wandering came first and the
6:57unhappiness followed. That's a strong
6:59hint, not proof. Now, think about what
7:02that means for the two selves. The
7:04experiencing self was at that dinner,
7:07but it wasn't paying attention, so it
7:09handed almost nothing to the remembering
7:10self. An hour you don't show up for is
7:13an hour your memory can't keep. And the
7:15cost is quiet, but enormous.
7:17You can spend years in the same room as
7:18the people you love and still feel later
7:21like you missed them. Trap three, the
7:24open horizon. I'll call her this
7:26weekend. We should really get dinner
7:28soon. I'll go see my parents when work
7:30calms down. You've said some version of
7:32these hundreds of times. You do care.
7:34Some part of you is simply certain there
7:36will always be another weekend. Laura
7:38Carstensen, a psychologist at Stanford,
7:40has spent decades studying how the time
7:42we feel we have left shapes what we do
7:44with it. She calls it socioemotional
7:47selectivity theory. When the future
7:49feels wide open, people explore. They
7:51chase new contacts, new information, new
7:54opportunities, and they put off the
7:56people they already love because those
7:58people will always be there. When the
8:00future feels limited, priorities flip
8:03and people start choosing the
8:04relationships that matter most. In one
8:06study with Barbara Fredrickson,
8:08Carstensen asked younger and older
8:09adults to pick one of three people to
8:12spend half an hour with.
8:14Older adults picked someone emotionally
8:16close. Younger adults spread their
8:18choices around, but when younger people
8:20imagined they were about to move across
8:21the country, they started choosing just
8:24like the older ones. Then in Hong Kong,
8:27Helene Fung, Carstensen and Amy Lutz
8:30watched the same shift happen in real
8:32life. A year before the 1997 hand over
8:35to China, only older people preferred
8:37familiar company. Two months before it,
8:40when the future felt uncertain, young
8:42people did, too. A year after, the gap
8:45between the ages was back. So, age was
8:47never the real variable. The feeling of
8:49time was. And here's the trap. Most of
8:52the time you feel like you have forever.
8:55So, let me do some math you've probably
8:57been avoiding. Say your parents are in
8:58their mid-60s and you see them twice a
9:01year around the holidays. If they live
9:03into their 80s,
9:05that's somewhere around 15 to 20 more
9:07years. Twice a year, that's 30 to 40
9:09visits. Not 40 years. 40 visits at most.
9:13You may already have spent most of the
9:15time you'll ever get with them back when
9:16you lived under their roof and were too
9:18young to notice. Every when things calm
9:21down is a withdrawal from a number
9:22you've never once counted. Things are
9:24not going to calm down. You are going to
9:27have to choose. That's the cost of the
9:29open horizon. The people you love keep
9:32getting your leftovers because you're so
9:33sure there will be more. And this is the
9:35paradox underneath all three traps.
9:38Almost everything you do to save time
9:40ends up shrinking your life. The same
9:42route saves 10 minutes and erases the
9:44trip. The phone at dinner saves a reply
9:46and erases the dinner. Later saves you
9:49an awkward phone call and quietly spends
9:51the relationship. In 1886, Leo Tolstoy
9:54wrote a short novel about exactly this,
9:57The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
10:00Ivan is a respected judge who did
10:02everything right. A good career, a
10:04proper house, correct choices at every
10:06turn. Then he falls ill. And as he
10:08searches his past for the moments that
10:10were truly good, almost none of them
10:13hold up. Only his earliest memories of
10:15childhood still feel alive. The closer
10:18he gets to the present, the emptier his
10:20joys look. He never wasted his life in
10:22any way anyone could see. He just lived
10:25it on schedule. So, how do you spend
10:27your life wisely? First, let go of the
10:29idea that you can force time to slow
10:31down. You can't make a moment last
10:33longer by staring at it. Watching the
10:35clock actually does the opposite of what
10:37you want. A watched hour drags while
10:39you're stuck in it, then vanishes once
10:41it's over, because waiting gave your
10:44memory nothing to keep. Willpower won't
10:46stretch your life. What you can change
10:49is what you hand to the remembering
10:51self, what you show up for, and how
10:54honestly you count what's left. Here are
10:57three ways to do that. Principle one,
10:59put a first in every week. In 2020, a
11:02team led by Aaron Heller and Katherine
11:04Hartley used phone GPS to track 122
11:09people in New York and Miami for 3 to 4
11:12months, texting them regularly to ask
11:14how they felt.
11:16On days when people moved through a
11:17wider variety of places, they felt more
11:19positive, and the good mood carried into
11:22the next day. It ran the other way, too,
11:24since feeling good made people more
11:26likely to explore. So, this is a link,
11:29not a proven cause,
11:30but it points somewhere useful. You
11:32don't need a plane ticket. A first can
11:35be small, a different route home, the
11:37restaurant you've driven past for years,
11:39a class you're terrible at, a real
11:42conversation with the neighbor you
11:43usually just nod to. Once a week, do one
11:46thing you've never done before, and you
11:48hand the remembering self something it
11:50can actually keep.
11:52Just don't do it for the highlight reel.
11:54A first only counts if you're actually
11:56there for it. Principle two, build the
11:59peak, guard the ending. In 1993,
12:02Kahneman and his colleagues asked people
12:04to hold one hand in painfully cold water
12:07at 14° C
12:08for 60 seconds.
12:10In a second trial, with the other hand,
12:12they did the same 60 seconds and then
12:14kept the hand in for 30 seconds more
12:17while the water warmed by about 1°.
12:19Still uncomfortable, just a little less.
12:22Later, when asked which trial they'd
12:23rather repeat, nearly 70% chose the
12:26longer one. More pain simply because it
12:29ended better. That's the remembering
12:31self at work. It doesn't add up every
12:33moment. It grabs the most intense moment
12:36and the ending, then builds the whole
12:38story from those. A 2022 meta-analysis
12:42covering 174 effect sizes found this
12:45pattern holds up strongly, even though
12:47it doesn't look identical in every
12:48setting. So, use it. When you're with
12:51people who matter, protect the peak. Put
12:53the phone in another room for the one
12:55conversation that counts tonight. And
12:57guard the ending. Don't let a visit end
12:59with a rushed goodbye at the door while
13:01you check the time. Stay five more
13:03minutes. End the call on something true.
13:06End the day by noticing one thing you'd
13:08want to remember. You can't be fully
13:10present for every hour of your life.
13:12Nobody can. But, you can be there for
13:14the moments your memory is going to keep
13:16anyway. Principle three, count visits,
13:19not years. Carstensen's research has a
13:22hopeful side. If young people start
13:24choosing like older people the moment
13:25the future feels shorter, you don't have
13:27to wait for age to give you that
13:29clarity. You can borrow it. Take the
13:31five people who matter most to you. For
13:34each one, estimate honestly how many
13:36more times you'll see them at the pace
13:37you're going now. Don't just sit with
13:40the number. Change it. Put the next
13:42visit on the calendar today. Turn we
13:44should get dinner into a day and a
13:46place. Let a shorter horizon do for you
13:48what it did for those young people in
13:49Hong Kong and move the people you love
13:52to the front of the line. When you start
13:53living this way, you might expect all
13:55this talk of limited time to make you
13:57anxious or sad. The research suggests
14:00the opposite. In 2011, Carstensen's team
14:03published a study that gave people
14:05pagers for a week and asked how they
14:07felt at random moments, then repeated
14:09the whole thing five and 10 years later.
14:12On average, emotional life grew more
14:14positive and more stable as people aged.
14:17The researchers couldn't fully separate
14:18this from physical health, so treat it
14:20as a pattern, not a promise. But
14:23Carstensen's explanation is the one that
14:24matters here. People who sense the edge
14:27of their time stop spreading themselves
14:29thin. They spend what's left on what
14:31they care about, and that tends to make
14:33them calmer, not more afraid. You can't
14:36add hours to your life. Nobody can. But
14:39you can stop letting your days get
14:40compressed. Every first every moment you
14:43actually show up for every visit you
14:45stop postponing is a change your memory
14:48has to keep. And when you look back on a
14:50year lived that way, it won't shrink
14:52down to the size of a weekend. It will
14:54feel like a year, maybe longer. Your
14:56life gets longer in the one place it was
14:58ever really measured. Every one of us is
15:00running out of time at exactly the same
15:02speed, one day per day.
15:05What differs is how much of it we keep.
15:07In her 1989 book, The Writing Life, the
15:10writer Annie Dillard put the whole thing
15:12into one sentence. How we spend our days
15:15is, of course, how we spend our lives.
15:18Not your years, not your plans for
15:21someday, your days. This one and the
15:24next one and the one after that. So, out
15:27of the three traps we covered today, the
15:29repeat, the absent hour, and the open
15:32horizon, which one has taken the most
15:34from you? Tell me in the comments. I
15:36read them and I promise you're not the
15:38only one who has looked up and wondered
15:40where the time went. If this video made
15:42you think of someone you keep meaning to
15:44call, call them first, then send it to
15:46them. And if you know someone who has
15:48been quietly feeling their life slip by,
15:50share it with them. It might be exactly
15:52what they need to hear today. Subscribe
15:54and turn on notification, so we can keep
15:56exploring the hidden corners of the mind
15:58together. Thank you for spending this
15:59part of your life with me. Goodbye, and
16:02see you next time.

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