Growing up comes with an unspoken contract of feeling constantly piled on with different responsibilities, all at once. These can range from self-growth to career and relationships. Every aspect of your life demands that you show up with a continuous effort toward growth. Which, in essence, is healthy. However, in the pursuit to push yourself to show up as your best, it’s easy to slip into overdrive.

This often shows up subtly, maybe with a little more pressure here, a little less rest there, until hustling and trying to keep up become the default setting. You wake up with a mind preoccupied with what still needs fixing, improving or achieving; an endless list of to-dos might be running high and, for many, causing anxiety right as they wake up.

Adding to this already persisting pressure, living in a digitally dominated culture only culminates in a sense of urgency or the feeling of “not doing enough.” And, when you’re narrowly focused on achieving a certain goal, life starts feeling smaller and often seems to just “pass you by.”

While you may feel compelled to rush or achieve more, a much healthier and, in many ways, smoother way to live is to slow down. Fully engaging in the present moment can transform how you experience your life.

Being Completely Present Can Be Challenging

Slowing down simply means bringing awareness to your present experience. As simple as that may sound, it’s harder in practice, because there are too many easily accessible distractions today. There is a barrage of digital notifications bringing in the never-ending allure; in some cases, even addiction to social media and the habit of multitasking, which can contribute to fragmenting attention spans.

In a 2021 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, researchers set out to understand why social media distracts users and what drives this pull toward constant checking. They studied over 300 participants from diverse backgrounds.

They found that the pull toward social media stems from the desire to stay connected, the fear of missing out (FoMO) as well as task-related distraction, where social media becomes an easy escape from tasks that feel boring or uncomfortable.

Researchers also noted that people are most likely to reach for their phones in quiet or non-interactive situations, like studying or watching TV, basically moments when their minds are unoccupied and most susceptible to digital temptation.

These findings highlight what we are slowly becoming aware of: that social media is subtly conditioning the mind to constantly seek stimulation.

This habit isn’t limited to phone use. It starts spilling into every other area of life. Your brain is getting used to constant stimulation, so there is a good chance it will crave the same level of arousal everywhere. You may start feeling restless in stillness or uneasy when there’s “nothing happening.”

Even when you’re doing something meaningful, such as reading, eating, working or talking to someone, part of your mind may still be anticipating something else to check, see or respond to.

This drains mental energy and makes it difficult to engage deeply with only one thing. Be it your work, a conversation or even self-reflection, your attention might be completely scattered. Essentially, distraction becomes the default.

When you consciously slow down, even just a little, you begin to notice changes in how you experience life. These shifts are subtle at first but quickly ripple into everything you do.

How Distraction Warps Your Sense Of Time

Time starts feeling more distorted as you rush through life or when you become constantly distracted and dependent on some sort of stimulation all the time. Moments that should feel significant may pass by almost imperceptibly.

This is dangerous because it can eventually reduce your capacity to engage in important moments of your life. Simple joys such as deep conversations, personal achievements and heartfelt moments with loved ones may feel like they amount to nothing when they go unnoticed or unappreciated. In retrospect, this can leave a sense of emptiness or regret of not having lived life fully when you could have.

A 2018 study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research examined how people at risk for social media addiction perceive time. The participants that were classified as at-risk for social media addiction consistently overestimated how long tasks took, while low-risk participants underestimated the time. Even thinking about social media warped their sense of time.

The study reiterates what perhaps is an experience for many now. When attention is habitually pulled outward, toward phones, notifications or the next task, your experience of time itself becomes fragmented.

Slowing Down Can Expand Your Sense Of Time

A growing body of research has examined how mindfulness shapes perception of time. A 2024 large-scale integrative review published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews synthesized evidence from 47 studies involving about 5,800 participants to explore this connection.

Drawing data from major psychology databases, they found that mindfulness and time perception share a complex and multifaceted relationship. Their findings suggest that mindfulness can alter how people experience time across different contexts and reference frames, sometimes slowing it down, as seen in long-term meditation practice and sometimes making it feel faster during deeply engaging tasks.

The study highlights that mindfulness doesn’t simply change how long time feels but transforms the quality of your awareness within it, offering a reminder that attention determines how fully you live each moment.

Research published in Frontiers in Psychology tested whether long-term mindfulness meditation affects the experience of time. The study compared 42 experienced meditators (with an average of 10 years of practice) to 42 non-meditators matched for age, sex and education.

Participants completed psychophysical tasks measuring objective time perception, including duration discrimination, duration reproduction and time estimation over intervals ranging from milliseconds to minutes. They also completed questionnaires assessing subjective time, such as feelings of time pressure, perceived passage of time and retrospective judgments of the past week and month. The goal was to examine both objective accuracy in timing and subjective experiences of time in everyday life.

Although the study found that mindfulness meditators did not differ from non-meditators on objective time tasks, meaning both groups were equally accurate in judging and reproducing time intervals, on subjective measures, meditators reported less time pressure, more time dilation and a generally slower passage of time.

They also reported feeling that the past week and month passed more slowly compared to non-meditators. So, while meditation doesn’t necessarily improve objective time perception, it manages to change the way time is experienced, creating a sense of expanded or slower time in daily life.

Shift From Constant ‘Doing’ To Simply ‘Being’

In all the times you’re anxious or under constant pressure, you’re likely also experiencing a distorted relationship with time. In all your worries about those deadlines, future outcomes or “not doing enough,” your mind compresses experience and snatches away the essence of life, almost making a happy and slower life seem out of reach. You try to do more in less time, which only intensifies stress and makes it harder to focus or enjoy what you’re doing.

While the studies mentioned above focused primarily on meditation, there is a broader lesson to focus on here. Slowing down is a lifestyle choice you can make in any moment. You don’t need years of formal practice to expand your sense of time.

You can start with something as small as simply paying closer attention to what brings you joy in any given moment and savoring it fully. Try to feel gratitude for it, not just by saying thank you but also by understanding why you feel said thankfulness. This makes you step back and actually take in what’s happening, and truly appreciate the privilege of that moment.

The more you do this, the more this becomes an automatic habit. And in this way, you choose to make life feel richer with your presence. Expansion of time isn’t about adding hours, but about choosing to live each moment more deliberately.

Curious how present you really are in your daily life? Take this science-backed test to find out: Mindful Attention Awareness Scale

A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.