How your brain’s internal clock hijacks your decisions – and 3 ways to fix it. 

Have you ever felt like time was closing in, the pressure was on, and you felt you had to make a decision NOW?

Yet, instead of weighing your options, calming your nerves, and grounding yourself, you became caught up in the moment…

And made an impulsive decision you later regretted.

Maybe you sent a heated text to a partner in the middle of an argument instead of sleeping on it, let go of a valuable employee before thinking through the ramifications on your business, or made a large purchase without considering the credit card bill at the end of the month.

Rest assured, the problem may not be your decision-making, but the way your brain assesses time.

We think of time as a constant – as predictable as the sun and the moon. However, as it turns out, we don’t always experience time in a linear, predictable manner.

Our brains operate in a process called “temporal distortion” where time speeds up, or slows down, depending on our current mental and emotional state.

You’ve experienced temporal (time) distortion on many occasions.

• A traffic jam lasting minutes felt like an eternity
• A three-hour dinner with friends flew by
• A work meeting seemed to make you older by the minute
• A two-week vacation felt like it passed in a few short days

Yet, temporal distortion doesn’t just impact our sense of time, it can greatly impact our choices and decisions – and not always positively.

Gap Insight: When you give in to time-pressure, you often allow worry, anxiety, or fear to make your decisions for you. Unfortunately, these decisions – rooted in emotion and lacking grounding and clarity – often come back to bite you.

The Science of Temporal Distortion

We live in a stressful world where everything seems to be moving at the speed of light.

Between the race to incorporate AI, emails filling your inbox, and your to-do list piling up like unattended laundry, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and lose track of time.

The next thing you know, a day, a week, or an entire year is over, and it felt like it all passed by in a flash.

This is a common experience, and science can explain why.

Neural scientists have proven that neurotransmitters like dopamine and adrenaline speed up, or slow down, our brain’s internal clock, impacting how we assess time.

It turns out the saying “Time flies when you’re having fun,” is absolutely true.

It’s also true that time slows to a snail’s pace when we’re bored, depressed, or disinterested.

Therefore, depending on our emotional state, our experience of time is often distorted, sometimes subtly, and other times dramatically.

That’s why, when we’re feeling stressed for time (and distorting it), we often make impulsive and rash choices and opt for immediate gratification instead of exercising patience.

In short, time distortion often leads to very bad decision-making.

Gap Insight: Understanding temporal distortion is especially important for executives, athletes, parents, or for anyone in the process of making a critical decision.

3 Types of Temporal Distortion

Temporal distortion leading to poor decisions comes in 3 distinct forms:

• Time compression
• False permanence/frozen in time
• Time fragmentation

Time compression

Time compression leads to statements like:

• “This needs to be solved now.”
• “There’s no time to think.”
• “If I wait, I’ll lose everything.”

These statements lead to rash decisions based on fear. Fear choices rarely work out for the best because they’re emotionally driven and seldom thought out thoroughly. All for the sake of temporarily decreasing anxiety.

Laying off staff because of one bad month, or selling off stocks because of a temporary dip in the market are both examples of potentially bad decisions due to time compression.

False permanence/frozen in time

False permanence/frozen in time sounds like:

• “That’s just how I am.”
• “Things will never change.”
• “I’ve tried everything.”

These statements reflect someone frozen in time and unwilling to budge.

They indicate inflexibility, an unwillingness to shift perspective, and a reliability on perceived certainty when things are anything but certain.

Decisions from these beliefs lack options and therefore innovation or imagination, both of which are required for optimal solutions to complicated challenges.

Examples might include failing to learn new money-managing skills because you’ve decided that’s just not your thing because you’re “terrible with money.”

Or, deciding to give up on a goal or project because you think you’ve exhausted all the options when all you had to do was reach out for help.

Time fragmentation

Time fragmentation occurs when we become trapped between past regret and future anxiety.

• “Is this the right decision?”
• “What if this fails?”
• “The last decision I made didn’t work out.”

When we’re stuck in time fragmentation, decisions are difficult and can be exhausting because we’re rooted in doubt.

This often results in decision paralysis, over control, or avoidance of a decision altogether.

For example, you decide to:

• Wait for the stars to align before writing that book or starting a new project.
• Hold off on starting that new business until you know it won’t fail.
• Wait to exercise again because you hurt yourself the last time.

In all three of these examples, poor decisions were formed through a distorted sense of time. The cure is to learn to expand time when it feels contracted.

Gap Insight: Your worst decisions were probably made inside one of these three states. Your best ones were made in none of them.

3 Questions to Expand Time

The solution to temporal distortion is to expand time, rather than let your brain shrink it, so you can restore calm, perspective, and clarity.

So, the next time you’re feeling the heat and close to making a rash, hurried decision, expand time by asking these three questions:

1. If I had one year to make this decision, what would I take into consideration and how would I approach a solution?

This question allows your nervous system to regulate, take a more methodical approach to a solution rather than an emotional one, and allows you to come to a decision independently of your time crunch.

2. What would my future-self advise me to do in this situation?

This question provides an alternative perspective from someone (your future self) looking back, which allows for deeper reflection and contemplation.

3. What am I actually afraid of here?

This question allows you to assess the actual threat, or lack of it, and helps you face your fears rather than give into them. Worry, fear, and anxiety are all based on perceptions of future threats, so facing them head-on can help to disperse their energy.

All three questions allow time to become your best friend rather than your adversary, and your decision-making can come from a grounded and clear space rather than a stressed one.

Gap Insight: Expanding time is not a trick, it’s one of the most important leadership and life skills that nobody teaches.

Final Thoughts

Leaders, athletes, coaches, parents, students, and the rest of us can become caught up in an internal dialogue that either compresses, fragments, or freezes time.

So let me ask you this…

What big decisions are you making in your life right now?

Are you allowing time to work for you or against you?

Perhaps you’re deciding what to do about a relationship, whether to take an opportunity at work, if you should take that dream trip, or how to approach a challenge in the office.

Whatever your looming decision, grab your journal and write out those three future-oriented questions.

They’re guaranteed to shift your perspective and your nervous system.

Keep in mind, the gap between where you are and your best possible decision is almost always measured not in information or intelligence, but in the state of your nervous system when you make it.

P.S. If you, or someone you know is facing a challenge and struggling with a decision, please forward this along or reach out for a free consultation. You don’t have to do it alone!

Yours in health and all the time in the world, David