Linear time is a major feature of our Western cultural world-view, apparently initiated by Newton some 300 years ago. It portrays time as an absolute physical reality, and says that the passage of time is independent of consciousness. So it doesn't matter what you think, feel, or do, or how you look at time, time doesn't change as a result.
Of course clock time is a standard that we don't want to change: its continuous measurement of the passage of events enables us to coordinate our activities. But linear time, which is an experiential perspective completely independent of clock time, combines (1) the actual feeling of time slipping from one moment to another, and (2) many different feelings--like overwhelm, pressure, anxiety, hurry, time poverty, frustration, and boredom--that we have as and about time.
In the linear view, time flows like a conveyor belt that moves horizontally from past to present to future at the same unchangeable speed for all of us. (See Edward T. Hall, The Dance of Life (New York: Doubleday, 1983), pp. 78-9.) Time feels out of our control; we may feel some helplessness, and think we can only adapt to this 'reality'.
<---past present future --->
The conveyor passes through three rooms: past, present, and future. We're always in the present room--we take that for granted. We can't go into the future or past rooms because there seems to be an impenetrable divider between the rooms.
On the conveyor there is an apparently endless series of containers extending into the past on the one hand and into the future on the other. The way we 'spend our time' is by putting our activities into the containers as the conveyor moves by us. These containers are all the same size, so we can put only so many activities in a given container, then that time is used up, and the container moves into the past. What was put into the containers moves farther and farther into the past, and doesn't seem to affect us. Wasting time is not filling the containers as they go by. Since we know that there are a limited number of containers that will pass by during our lifetime, we're anxious about not having enough time. Furthermore, since each container has the same size, what we can accomplish in any time period appears to be limited by the structure of time itself. Racing against the conveyor and trying to overfill containers can lead to overwhelm and burnout.
The dividers between the past, present, and future rooms have hazy windows in them. Even though we can't go into the future room, we can look into it through its window. Planning an activity is similar to peering through the hazy window to see how the fuzzy future forms might shape up. We then get an idea of what's 'coming down the pike' toward us on the conveyor.
With the experience of time flowing between past, present, and future there is a dissatisfied self 'spending time' in the foreground. The self reaches out for satisfaction, looking to other people to fulfill desires, or seeking out special things and activities. The self 'looks forward to' things, but has difficulty fully appreciating them.
What other view of time is possible? See Linear vs. Timeless Views, and the discussion of our "Experience of time" in both 'deadline scenarios' and peak performance in "The Qualities of Deadline Pressure Scenarios." To transform the linear sense of time flowing, see How Our Sense of Time Flow is Created.
Copyright © 1996 by Steve Randall, Ph.D.
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