I have often wondered why time seems to speed up in September and doesn’t slow down until January. Is it all the holidays in the last quarter? Is it a function of business targets needing to be met by year end? Or is it all in my head?

The term “time flies” has been around for centuries – dating as far back as 29 BC. Virgil’s Georgics referred to this by the latin phrase “Tempus Fugit”. I’m glad to see it isn’t just me. The perception of time is fuelled by two things; anticipation and retrospection. I’ve thought about how these two things function in life and the workplace and I think they explain why many of us feel like time is accelerating.

ANTICIPATION

Let’s define anticipation first, with help of the Cambridge English Dictionary, as a feeling of excitement about something that is going to happen in the near future. According to Wall Street Journal writer Phil Yaffe, when we anticipate, initially each new significant event seems far away. Time however, just keeps marching forward and like all events in our lives, the day often comes quicker than we’d like.  Consider an exam or a major deadline and that feeling of disbelief that we are out of time to hand a job in.

After the event occurs, we reflect on it and think, did that really happen so long ago? The best and easiest way to describe this scenario is with children and summer vacation. It’s the long awaited break from school that never seems to arrive. Then once summer has come and gone the kids complain it was over too fast and it feels long ago.

RETROSPECTION

Yaffe explains that as we age and get older, we experience many life events or milestones. As time passes we accumulate milestones in life as well as at work. The interesting thing is that as we achieve these milestones they quickly recede into the past. This is Yaffe’s retrospective component, defined as taking a look back at events that already have taken place.

Basically, we spend our lives looking forward to events in the future but also looking back at events that happened in the past; anticipation and retrospection. While we’re doing this, the calendar just keeps moving forward. Time then seems to accelerate as a function of the accumulation of all these milestones!  Just ask a parent or a senior, they will tell you to enjoy every moment, it all goes by so fast!

I honestly feel this happens at work in the same manner as it happens in our lives.  The end of the year is approaching and we really feel time speed up and know we have many things still to do.  So what can we do about it?

TAKE ACTION

Accept the feeling of time accelerating and that we still have things to do in 2015

Plan what you can finish by the end of 2015, and

Celebrate this year, it feels like it went by so fast because a lot was accomplished!

The Productivity Consultant in me likes to focus on the second suggestion around planning (although I’m always happy to join a party if you’re ready to celebrate).

Here are my suggestions:

  1. To begin, write down what needs to be done by year-end and determine your top priorities.
  2. Assign deadlines to the tasks in order to drive productivity and decrease procrastination.
  3. When setting your deadlines make sure you have room in your calendar to protect time to focus on the work. 

Always set yourself up for success, even if that means being realistic about what you can accomplish by year’s end. You may not be able to do it all, but you will get to those top priorities if you plan your time wisely.

Realistically, time is moving forward at the same speed it always has moved. The fact that we feel time speeding up is a result of our ability to look forward to things as well as look back on what we have accomplished. The end of the year is coming, but not any faster than any other time of the year. It just feels faster because we’ve done a lot of work in 2015 and I think that is something to celebrate!