Blog Archives
PERFORMING BETTER IN OWNED TIME
Living in my time, not wearing a watch and doing things when I feel like it, seems to run against the self-control and personal interdependence that Norbert Elias, 1897-1990, called the civilizing process. He identified a dramatic reduction in homicides in England. The trend became the theme of Pinker’s tome ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature.’ He explained that youth rebellion worldwide is a counterculture against social time, when timeliness has become a personal battle, from A Clockwork Orange to the hippy movement.
In 2022 we have achieved historically low homicide rates worldwide, without the stress of obeying ‘Slessor’s little fidget wheels’ which would impose clock time. We can choose to have our cake of time freedom and eat it too, by allowing ourselves to flow timelessly, by optimal achievement, according to Mihaly’s theory of that psychological condition.
My novels ‘Time is Gold’ and ‘Turkeys Not Bees’ tell stories about high achievers who have let flow take over their time. Reviews: martinknox.com
LIFESTYLE RECOVERY RESET AFTER PANDEMIC
People encountering the 2020-21 pandemic restrictions may have ‘entered a time warp’, with distortion of familiar values, especially money and time. Finding a way back through unfamiliar financial terrain could be important.
Covid has created uncertainty and anxiety for many people. They have abandoned, slowed or deferred usual activities. There has been a timeout, allowing relaxation from stressful routines but restrictions may have brought complacency and slack inactivity. With insufficient stimuli, time may have dragged.
Without the usual referent of work days and social meetings, personal time may have become disoriented. Personal goals, such as exercising, dieting, studying, writing, may have been abandoned. Social activities may have been stopped. Some people may have enjoyed their freedom but others may have become relatively inactive.
Deadlines that structured activity, such as grocery shopping, may be cast in a new mould. Spending habits may have been limited by the money supply and when that changes, activities such as clothes shopping, may stop. Many people have adopted emptier more relaxed time schedules.
Reduced consumption may cause money to accumulate and new activities become possible, such as shopping online, investment in home appliances, furniture, autos or moving house. Acquisitions can seem more momentous during pandemic restriction, because although money is cheaply available, there can be fewer than usual investment opportunities and at higher prices. Time horizons are pushed back by restriction delays and low interest rates may stimulate big item spending. Costs of delaying are tolerable and borrowing over longer periods accepted.
Recovery of participation in high risk activities, such as travel and audience events, may be tentative, with empirical results revealing any remaining hazard. To recover, individuals may set goals to revert to previous activities, or they may want to continue elements of their restricted lifestyle. Resetting of goals with new time and money constraints could bring a more purposeful lifestyle.
Sufficient personal time is available for careful planning.
Conscious resetting of living parameters affected by pandemic restrictions could enable a brave new start, with goals for relationships, employment, residence, motoring, holidays, health, exercise, diet and education. These could provide structure for taking up the reins of a life that may have been partially surrendered in a previous treadmill-like existence. Pandemic restrictions may have brought new experiences that are wanted to continue. There could be a new awareness of the uncertainty of living, a need for patience and a new sense of owning personal time.
My writing about personal time is at https://martinknox.com
Review of novel Time is Gold
Reviewed By Romuald Dzemo for Readers’ Favorite: 5 STARS
Time is Gold by Martin Knox is a brilliantly plotted and well-written novel that centers on a strong and original concept. Maxi Fleet wants just one thing: to run faster than any female has ever run before. She is training to beat the world. Stan has offered a lot of support, supervising and guiding her as she trains to compete in a future marathon. Maxi is determined to push herself beyond the limits and achieve her dream, and there is a strong support system to help her as she pursues this dream. Jack Cram is a PhD student in physics who is working on a revolutionary concept of stretching time. In Maxi, he finds the best opportunity to experiment on his theory, and if he succeeds, it will be a breakthrough for him and the scientific community. Can his idea of “extreme-flow” improve Maxi’s performance and produce the desired results?
This is a wonderful story with elaborately developed themes, including love, ambition, hard work and pain, the drive for success, performance, and friendship. Set in the future, it has strong psychological and scientific underpinnings. The story is told in an absorbing first-person narrative, a style the author uses with mastery and it establishes a real connection between readers and the characters. The story has a premise that got me hooked right off the bat and I loved the bold ideas developed in this novel, especially the concept of “extreme-flow.” This concept stipulates that anyone can perform better by getting into the flow that is extremely engaged. Hence marathon runners and others who embrace endurance with cognitive vigor can bolster their time, bit by bit, crossing finishing lines earlier, inserting additional accomplishment and staying younger. Time is Gold is a classic novel, speculative in style, hugely engaging, and featuring tight and excellent writing. While I loved the plot points, it was the depth with which the characters are written that had me turning the pages.
Information https://martinknox.com
How a runner can go further in less time at the same speed.
When movement is in a faster time frame, time dilates.‘
Relativity causes movement in a faster time frame to dilate time, either for an astronaut or for a stimulus response signal in human nervous system. Time dilation is explained below.
Einstein did a thought experiment about a spaceship. An astronaut inside it flashes a pulse of light perpendicularly across the spacecraft, setting off a timer and reflecting back from a mirror to the timer again. The travel time across the width is T seconds read from the timer.’
If the spaceship moves forward at the speed of light, would the travel time T across the spaceship and back be the same as when it was stationary?’
If we could look inside through a porthole using a telescope from Earth, we would see the path of the light pulse illuminating dust particles in the air along a diagonal path to the mirror in its new position, being reflected off the mirror and coming back along another diagonal, completing a dogleg.
Can the light pulse still go across in T? It has three conditions to obey. 1. The diagonal path is further than the path perpendicularly across; 2. It must arrive by the same time T; and 3. It cannot go faster than the speed of light.
It can’t, because to go further along the diagonal in the same time, it would have to go faster. But if it was already at the speed of light and couldn’t go faster. Nor could it arrive after the time the astronaut would observe.
Therefore it would be impossible for the pulse to be seen at the same time. Einstein supposed time would dilate or stretch. If each second lasted longer, it would make sense. We are used to a pendulum beating out constant aliquots of time but at high speeds it would have to beat more slowly and because each second would be longer, the longer distance could be travelled in fewer seconds.
Next in this series it is shown how time dilation for a person in a much faster time frame would cause a higher speed of travel.
My fiction novel Time is Gold, to be published shortly, tells how an athlete exploits metaphysics and wins.
http://www.martinknox.wordpress.com
