This is an excerpt from my latest book Dear Hannah: 70 Methods I Used and Abused to Change Who I Am.

Playing with My Perception of Time

Date: February 5, 2002

Age: 19

Location: Stanford, CA

Subject: Time Dilation

Hannah, what happened today was the strangest, most mind-bending thing I’ve ever done. Have you ever looked at a clock and noticed the seconds were ticking faster than normal? Well, my whole day was like that. My sense of time stretched so much that I felt like weeks or months had transpired since this morning.

I’ve been reading Ray Kurzweil’s Age of Spiritual Machines, and it posits an interesting definition of time. According to Kurzweil, time is the measure of distance between changes. So the faster something changes, the slower it seems to take. Could we use this concept to slow down time? If we change ourselves rapidly, could our days seem longer?

And so, on the way to English class, I set my mind to this task. I tried to think of ways that I could change my life right at that moment. I randomly searched for a topic and settled on changing my religious beliefs. “Maybe I’m missing out on something by not exploring my spiritual side? Maybe I have some hidden biases that I need to examine?”

Initially, nothing happened, because in the back of my mind, I knew I was just pretending to go through a spiritual conversion. So I tried harder. I psyched myself into believing I was really on the cusp of an epiphany, that maybe I had been wrong all this time. And as I considered this possibility with all seriousness, I got scared at the thought. I started to believe my religious beliefs needed serious revision.

I then paused and checked my watch, and I was surprised that only two minutes had passed for what actually felt like an hour. Emboldened by this, I picked other topics. I questioned my political views, I questioned my views on gender roles, and I questioned the meaning of all my social relations. By the time I got to class, it felt like a few days had passed.

As I walked up the stairs to my classroom, my vision was blurry because I was so full of thought. I felt sore around my temples, and after I sat down, I kept rubbing my forehead to alleviate the pain. Class today was a discussion section, and as each person spoke, I kept up with my self-transformation routine. I looked at each of them intently and imagined what it would have been like if I had grown up in their shoes. What would it have been like to grow up in a small town in Oklahoma City? What would my beliefs be now? What if their worldview was completely accurate and mine had been wrong all this time?

By the time it was my turn to speak, I had a fever. I struggled to mask the anguish and tension inside of me. Ironically, though, my words were conveyed with an energy and intensity that held some students in rapt attention. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember it being lofty, and somewhat related to what was in my head. I said something to the effect that modern man no longer keeps his own time, but follows the time of the super-structures that embrace him wherever he goes. I got a lot of nods to that.

After class, I practically shouted in my head to stop what I was doing. It took me about two minutes to pull away, as another part of me wanted to keep pushing it further, to see just how much I could extend my perception of time. As I looked up, I saw a California blue sky pocked with dark clouds, which was a nice parallel to my state of full-blown rapture. I had to yell at myself, like I did when I assumed I was a million bucks, “Phil, you are in pain, stop!”

By the time I got back to my dorm, my fever had worsened, and I spent the rest of the day in bed.

I’m not exactly sure how this Kurzweil method just ripped through my life. Maybe it’s because I’m using this quarter to try new things. I took a page from your book, and signed up for random classes. I’m taking one on gender studies, another on primate evolution, and this course on American Modernism. Stanford doesn’t require anyone to declare a major until the middle of their junior year, and so I’m just filling my life with an eclectic portfolio. Combine these weird classes with these random experiments, and I think I’ve just about pushed the limits of my mind.

- Phil

How does over-thinking lead to pain? It reminds me of trying to solve the world’s hardest math problem. It exhausts me to the point where I can’t see, I can’t think, and I run out of juice to do all the normal functions that my brain needs.

A few times I’ve read blogs about novelty experiments. The writer tries to hit every item on their bucket list in one day or act super spontaneously, like dancing on the medians of the street, then giving a stranger a hug, then calling people and saying, “I love you.” But their reports, like the typical reports in self-improvement books, don’t mention the physical component. Is there any pain associated with these experiments? Why don’t we live our lives like this every day?