Time is weird. We feel it passing like a river, always flowing from a yesterday we can’t touch into a tomorrow that doesn’t exist yet. But if you talk to a physicist like Carlo Rovelli or dig into the math behind general relativity, you’ll find out that the order of time as we experience it is basically a massive trick our brains play on us. There is no global "now."
That sounds like a stoner thought, right? It isn't. It’s actually the bedrock of modern physics.
The Massive Lie of "Now"
Most of us live our lives assuming there’s a giant cosmic clock ticking away in the background of the universe. We think that if you could freeze the entire cosmos at this exact second, you’d see what’s happening on Mars, in the Andromeda galaxy, and in your kitchen all at once.
Einstein ruined that for everyone.
Because light has a speed limit, and because gravity warps the fabric of space, time doesn't tick at the same rate everywhere. If you live on a mountain, you age faster than someone living at sea level. Not by much—we’re talking nanoseconds that only an atomic clock can catch—but it’s real. Gravity literally slows time down. This means the order of time is local. Your "now" is not the same as the "now" of a satellite orbiting the Earth.
Actually, GPS satellites have to account for this. Their internal clocks are programmed to compensate for the fact that time moves faster for them than it does for us on the ground. If they didn't, your Google Maps would be off by kilometers within a single day.
Why Time Only Goes One Way
Why can't we remember the future? It seems like a dumb question, but in the fundamental laws of physics—the equations used by Newton, Maxwell, or Schrödinger—time doesn't actually have a preferred direction. Most of these formulas work just as well going backward as they do going forward.
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The reason we experience a specific order of time comes down to heat and a concept called entropy.
Think about a deck of cards. If you start with them perfectly ordered by suit and number, and then you shuffle them, they get messy. They get disordered. You could shuffle that deck for a billion years and the odds of them returning to that perfect original order are basically zero. This is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Everything in the universe moves from order to disorder.
We perceive the "direction" of time only because things are getting more chaotic. We see a glass shatter, but we never see the shards jump back onto the table to form a cup. That "shattering" creates a sequence. That sequence is what we call time. If the universe were perfectly static and nothing ever changed or moved toward disorder, time would essentially cease to exist as a concept.
The Boltzmann Brain and Our Memory
Our brains are essentially entropy-processing machines. We remember the past because the past had lower entropy. We have "traces" of it—records, memories, photographs. We don't have traces of the future because that higher-state entropy hasn't happened yet.
Carlo Rovelli, in his book The Order of Time, argues that time is an emergent property of our ignorance. Because we can't see the microscopic movements of every single molecule in the universe, we see blurred, macroscopic changes. That "blurring" is where the sensation of time's flow is born. If we could see everything at the quantum level, the distinction between past, present, and future might just vanish.
Space-Time is a Fabric, Not a Stage
People used to think space was a big empty box and time was a line moving through it. Now, we know they are fused together into "spacetime."
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When you move through space, you are also altering your movement through time. The faster you move, the slower you age relative to someone standing still. This isn't just a theory for sci-fi movies like Interstellar; it's a proven fact. Experiments with jet planes carrying atomic clocks have shown this "time dilation" over and over again.
This implies that the order of time is essentially a perspective.
Imagine you’re looking at a vast landscape. From where you’re standing, the mountain looks like it’s "behind" the forest. But if you walk ten miles to the left, the mountain is now "beside" the forest. Space works that way, and thanks to Einstein, we know time does too. Depending on your speed and your proximity to heavy objects (like planets or black holes), the sequence of events can actually look different to different observers.
The Human Element: Why We Feel Time Speeding Up
Have you ever noticed how a year felt like an eternity when you were seven, but now it feels like a weekend?
This isn't physics; it's biology. Our internal order of time is tied to how we process information. When we are young, everything is new. Our brains are recording massive amounts of data every second. When you look back at that period, the "density" of memory makes it feel long.
As we get older, we fall into routines. We stop paying attention to the drive to work or the way the grocery store looks. Our brains stop "recording" the mundane. When you look back at a year of routine, there’s very little data there. Your brain summarizes it: "Nothing happened." And just like that, the year feels like it vanished.
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To slow down your perception of the order of time, you actually need to seek out novelty. Travel to a new place. Learn a skill that makes you feel like a frustrated beginner. Force your brain to start recording again.
How to Apply the Physics of Time to Your Life
Understanding that time isn't a rigid, universal line can actually be pretty liberating. It shifts your focus from "managing" time to managing your energy and presence.
Audit your "Entropy"
Stop trying to fight the fact that things get messy. In your career or home life, realize that maintaining order requires a constant input of energy. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s usually because you’re trying to keep too many "shuffled cards" in a specific order. Let some things be messy.
Prioritize High-Density Moments
Since our brain's perception of the order of time is based on memory density, "time management" is a bit of a myth. You can't get more hours, but you can make the hours feel longer by breaking your routine. If you feel like life is passing you by, it’s because your days are too similar. Change your environment to "stretch" your personal timeline.
Acknowledge Your Perspective
Just as there is no single "now" in the universe, there is no single "correct" pace for a life. We often feel behind because we compare our order of time to someone else's. But physics tells us that every observer has their own valid frame of reference. Your timeline doesn't have to sync with a "universal" clock because that clock doesn't exist.
Practical Steps to Reclaim Your Time:
- Do one "First" every week: Eat at a restaurant you’ve never been to or take a different route home. This forces the brain to create new "time markers."
- Deep Work vs. Shallow Work: High-entropy tasks (multitasking, constant emails) fragment your perception of time, making you feel exhausted but like you've accomplished nothing. Single-tasking creates a "flow state" where the internal order of time feels more cohesive and satisfying.
- Use Gravity (Metaphorically): Just as physical mass warps time, "mental mass"—the big, important goals—should be what your days orbit around. If you fill your space with small pebbles, you lose the "warping" effect of truly meaningful work that gives a life its structure.
The universe doesn't have a master plan or a ticking clock. It’s just a vast, beautiful mess of events tangled together. The order of time is something we create to make sense of the chaos. Use that knowledge to stop rushing toward a "future" that is essentially just a state of higher entropy, and start inhabiting the "now" that is uniquely yours.