Three hours have passed. You
sit nervously by your phone, waiting for a reply from your crush. You message
your best friend: "Hey, when do you think s(he) will get back to me – it’s
been three hours. Three hours, [insert best friends name] !!!!!". You
start to wonder why your crush hasn’t responded. Is it because s(he) lacks
service? Then you remember it is the middle of the day on Tuesday, and that s(he)
might be at work. Wait, who has three hours of meetings? Then, like an angel,
the phone buzzes (because who uses ringtones anymore), and the name pops up on
the screen with the response: "Not much, what is up with you?" The
tables have turned.
You could respond right
away, but then think to yourself: Hold
on, will I look desperate? I don't want him/her knowing that I was waiting for
a reply. You start to wonder how long you should take to respond. Is it five minutes, is it 10? Maybe three hours
- maybe that will be our interval between texts.
We’ve all done it -- worried
about time -- either having too much, or not having enough. The funny thing
about time is that we humans created it. Time is a measurement of the interval
between two events, but there is no natural occurrence of it. We used it to
measure the time between sunrises (also known as days). Time gives us some level of
expectation; we have a sense of how long it takes an egg to boil, or how long
our daily commutes are; how long a movie should be before people get up and
walk out.
Time is a very important
thing; that’s why we created it. Imagine life without time. When will George get here? Erm, when his
horse gets him here. Time allows us to build the foundations of
expectations and creates structure in our society. We need to be to work
"on time,",we make dinner plans with a specific time in mind (Meet you there at 7:30). Time is most
certainly not a bad thing, but sometimes our interpretation of it is quite off.
We value time in different categories: the immediate, the short run, and the
long run. How we handle time depends on context.
Nerd Alert : The science of
expected time
The Poisson distribution is how us fancy
suspender-wearin’ folk deal with time. The concept, at its most
simple level is: If we are given the last occurrence of an event, and how often
that event occurs, we can calculate the nth
time you will see that event. Boring formula below: where lambda is the
rate and k being some occurrence of it, say the 5th.
So how does this tie back
in? Well, if we know the rate that our crush texts at, and we know the last
time s(he) sent us a message, we could calculate the next time they will text
us. However, we don't know our crush’s text rate, and to be honest, I don't
even know my text rate. So we do what every scientist does: We guess at what
his/her rate is. Sometimes we apply the “attacked by lion factor'” which states:
" If said person does not respond within t, I will assume they were attacked by a lion and thus could not
respond." To many this seems silly, but the next time someone hasn’t
responded to a text, write down the reason why you think they didn’t respond. Sometimes,
they are funny months later.
Time, in the immediate
These are short time events,
like how long should a pot boil? Their effect can be massive, but more often
than not, hey are actually not a big deal. Short term time is where we test our
impatience. It’s the time we think we will never get back, and it’s also the
one we have the most expectations about. I take the L train (what up, Brooklyn)
and my favorite thing about the L train is that it tells you how long until the
next train. They have these fancy signs at all the stops (P.S. not every subway
line has these).
Now normally, these info
boards say something like three, five, or seven minutes, or something more
reasonable. However, we expect that the train will arrive in seven minutes, and
when the train takes nine minutes, we are angry about it. The L train violated
the contract we made with it; I pay you $2.50, and you show up at that time
above. Being late falls into the immediate time category. I always push the
line of "on-time", generally I am a few minutes late. It angers
people, because like the L train, we agreed to show up at that time. The
immediate time interval angers us so much because since
the interval is so short, we expect few things to get in the way of
our planned time. The chaos level is much smaller if the interval is smaller.
Our confidence in our expectations is much more solid than say, our short run
time interval.
Time, in the short run:
It’s Monday. You have five days
to figure out what you are doing Saturday night. This medium planning is where
we really learn how to plan. We also do not put a lot pressure on ourselves
about short run issues. Your friend's flight gets moved, but that’s ok because
you have four days to deal with it before it approaches. Short run planning
also has lower stakes. If plans fall through, you are just sitting at home
watching some reruns on Netflix. The expected rewards are generally less than
those of the long run, and generally there is enough time to change course,
unlike the immediate time category.
Time, in the long run
So if you read my last post , you will notice my emphasis that in the long
run, we need to focus on what is best for us. However, that long run does end.
As Rolen pointed out, we are all dead in the long run. Fight Club said it best,
"On a long enough timeline, the survival rate of everyone is zero".
It’s kind of depressing, but it’s true. In the back our minds, we know our shot
clock is ticking.
We have natural shot
clocks. For women, it is having children, for men, it is having a full head of
hair. We get old and our time is limited. Being single at 18 is vastly different
then being single at 35, but it’s because time is no longer on our side. Time
is more telling than just the number - time has an end, an end we often fear.
Without an endpoint, time does not exist. Time is why YOLO exists, we don't
want to waste these precious minutes, so we must carpe diem (apparently saying it in Latin was too hard, so we
switched it to YOLO).
The scary part about time
in the long run is our expectations and the rewards from those expectations.
The small actions we do everyday affect us in the long run, and we are trying
to optimize things that are years away from today. Choosing a college
is a great example of this; juniors and seniors have to choose what college
they want to attend that will change their life forever. The thought that
we are trying to plan for something 10 years down the road makes us
crazy.
People often overthink the
time and the long run. Some people think (seriously, they do) like the following:
Min(marriage) = 2 years,
Min(per child)*n(desired children) = (2)*(3)=6. Marriage + Children =
8 years. My age + 8 years = X (age that i will have three children).
Then they often wonder if
that is too old. This concept is known as search theory.
According to some economist, we worry too much about being lonely today, and
not enough emphasis on the long run. We are pressured (for various reasons) to
get married within some time frame, but no one worries about the years after
that time frame. Take the person that says: “I want to get married before I'm
35." Well, sure that is fair, but if you rush it, do
remember that you might spend the next 35+ years with that person, so make sure
that person is good.
About Time:
Time dictates our life, and
we created it. We get angry at something that we control! We create these
expectations, so we can allow more time for things, and the stress will go
away. Our interactions with this data type time is like few others. It can be
quite unpredictable but makes us dependable on it.