We talk about time at work as if it’s a fixed resource: something outside of us and something we either “manage well” or “never have enough of.” People genuinely believe the clock is the problem. But the more you look at how the brain processes experience, the less true this becomes.

People don’t feel pressured because they have too many tasks. They feel pressured because their brain is constructing time in a way that makes everything feel urgent or impossible to catch up with.

Modern neuroscience has been pointing to this for a while. Our experience of time—what feels fast, slow, overwhelming, or “not enough”—is not a reading from an internal stopwatch. It’s a story the brain builds using prediction, memory, emotional state, and identity.

In other words: your brain doesn’t observe time

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