The illusion of time

Most people worry about time. They fill their calendars, watch the clock, and talk about losing time, wasting time, or running out of it. They try to squeeze in as much as possible, hoping to stay ahead.

But here’s the thing. When you are deep in building, learning, or doing real work, time disappears. You are not thinking about the hours ticking by. You just notice what is changing, what you are learning, or what you are creating.

Think about this. Have you ever had a day where nothing really changed? Maybe you sat in meetings, answered emails, or ticked off tasks, but made no real progress. At the end of it, the day feels like a blank. You barely remember it. Why? Because nothing changed.

Some physicists even say that time is not real. It is just a way for us to describe how things move and change. Einstein called time an illusion. You do not see time itself, you see changes happening.

If you are a builder, you already know this. When you are in flow, you are not wondering how long you have been working. You are focused on progress. You remember the days when you shipped something new, solved a tough bug, or learned something important. You do not remember the days you just watched the clock.

A lot of advice tells you to manage your time. Block out your calendar. Wake up earlier. Fit more into your schedule. But if you do all that, your day can start to feel like a game of Tetris, just fitting tasks into empty slots.

Try something different. Start tracking change, not just time. At the end of each day, ask yourself, what changed today because of me? Did I build something, learn something, or help someone else? If nothing really changed, the problem is not with the hours, it’s with action.

If you stop managing time and start making change, life feels very different. Time is just the background. Change is what matters.

A year from now, you will not remember how many hours you worked. You will remember what you built, what you learned, and what you changed.