PDF Summary:Slipstream Time Hacking, by Benjamin Hardy

Everyone gets only 24 hours in a day. But how much more could you get done—and how much more life could you experience—if you could slow those hours down and ensure you’re getting the most out of every moment? Organizational psychologist Benjamin Hardy writes in Slipstream Time Hacking (2015) that you can do exactly that, moving more quickly to make time run more slowly.

In this guide, we’ll explore Hardy’s theory that you can increase the speed you’re traveling toward your goals while simultaneously decreasing the rate at which time seems to pass—effectively buying yourself more time to enjoy the ride. Along the way, we’ll look at how other psychology, physics, and even science fiction experts have explored the principles that Hardy incorporates into his method.

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To visualize how this might work, imagine that you’re an aspiring chef and want to open your own restaurant. So you apprentice with an award-winning chef you’ve admired for years. In her kitchen, you observe her, learn her methods, and get introduced to her colleagues and investors. By following in her slipstream—a force created by her experience, knowledge, and influence—you make significantly faster progress toward your goals than you would alone.

(Shortform note: When Hardy talks about riding in someone’s slipstream, he’s talking about leveraging your access to people with power, resources, and social capital. However, that access is a privilege that not everyone has. So You Want to Talk About Race author Ijeoma Oluo explains that privilege is about having advantages that others don’t: You might have privilege because of your race, gender, religion, or socioeconomic status. That doesn’t mean you haven’t worked hard—just that you haven’t encountered the obstacles others face because of their identity or background. To see your privilege, scholar Peggy McIntosh says you must consider your personal experiences in the context of larger “patterns and systems in social life.”)

Wormholes

A fourth principle of Hardy’s method is that you can use wormholes to take shortcuts that reduce the time and effort needed to reach your goal. Hardy defines a “wormhole” as a shortcut that gets you to your goal in a nonlinear way. Importantly, not only does a wormhole enable you to spend less time traveling to your destination, but it also enables you to expend less effort getting there. Wormholes, as physicists define them, are theoretical. They’re thought to serve as a shortcut between two points in space separated by extremely long distances (like two locations on opposite sides of the galaxy). So finding a wormhole and traveling through it enables you to make incredible leaps toward your goals by reducing the distance you need to travel to get where you want to go.

(Shortform note: One way to visualize how traveling through a wormhole might get you to your goals faster is to think about a classic illustration from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. In the book, the characters travel through the universe via the tesseract: a fold in the fabric of space-time. When Mrs. Who and Mrs. Whatsit, supernatural characters who live outside linear time, explain their mode of interdimensional travel, they ask their audience to imagine an ant walking along a piece of fabric, traveling from point to point. If the fabric is folded to bring the two points together, the ant has a much shorter distance to travel. In the same way, traveling through a wormhole reduces the distance between you and your destination.)

Hardy considers traveling through wormholes an essential strategy for accomplishing big things. He believes that for most goals, you can find a wormhole that will change your life instantaneously. While finding wormholes comes down to luck, Hardy argues that you can create this luck by seeking it out. One way to do this is to travel in faster slipstreams, where you’re more likely to encounter a wormhole.

For example, let’s say you’re a writer who’s been struggling for years, writing and rewriting your novel and pitching it to dozens of agents with no luck. Then, you decide to go to a publishing industry conference, and at a party, you meet a literary agent who loves the idea of your book, has been looking for something just like it, and wants to read the manuscript. That unexpected connection presents a wormhole: an opportunity that could dramatically shorten the path between you and your goal of publishing your novel.

(Shortform note: If finding slipstreams and wormholes hinges on having access to accomplished or powerful people, then knowing the right people becomes extremely important. It also helps to be related to the right people, as demonstrated by the results of legacy admissions at elite universities. (The children of alumni and donors are four times as likely as their peers with the same test scores to be admitted.) The phenomenon of people benefiting from family connections is nothing new. But the internet recently invented the term “nepo baby,” which experts say expresses the frustration we feel watching some people benefit from unequal treatment and unfair advantages when we want to believe in meritocracy.)

Why Is All of This Important?

Relativity, time dilation, slipstream, wormholes: That’s a lot of physics (or science fiction) to wrap your head around. Hardy explains that time hacking involves using all these principles to make the most of your time. People “hack” their bodies, work, or productivity when they use out-of-the-ordinary methods to achieve extraordinary results. So Hardy uses the word “time hacking” to refer to radically slowing time down so that you can accomplish much more in your life than you’d achieve if you proceeded more conventionally.

(Shortform note: Not everyone thinks the modern penchant for life-hacking is good. In Cubed, Nikil Saval explains that the concept of life-hacking recalls the industrial-age obsession with standardizing and systematizing the American workplace to try to make workers more efficient. Every aspect of their day became a task that needed to be managed. In the same way, life-hacking considers every aspect of our lives a target for optimization. In Hacking Life, Joseph Reagle contends that this can go too far. He explains that treating your life as a system to be hacked can backfire, making you less happy or healthy than you were before if you don’t recognize when to stop trying to make improvements.)

Hardy explains that time hacking requires you to recognize that you’re in control of your time and to seek out slipstreams and wormholes that will speed your progress toward your goals. To engage in time hacking, you can’t think of time as linear, but instead have to think of it as nonlinear: a medium you can traverse at much faster speeds than you’ve ever thought possible. By taking advantage of the relativity of time and leveraging slipstreams and wormholes to take shortcuts, you can get more—more meaning, more happiness, and more progress toward your most important goals—out of the time you have.

(Shortform note: Hardy emphasizes that we control our time. It doesn’t always feel that way, but experts say we can feel more in control of our lives if we practice choosing what we pay attention to. Where we put our attention determines what we experience. To take more control of your attention and your time, experts recommend putting your phone on silent and storing it out of sight, letting others know when you’d like to work uninterrupted, devoting your full attention to one task at a time, and getting in the habit of noticing when your mind wanders and refocusing on what you need to be doing instead.)

How Can You Actually Slow Time Down?

Unlike wormholes and time travel, slipstream time hacking isn’t just theoretical. Instead, Hardy explains that it’s a practical method to achieve your goals. In this section, we’ll consider the practical steps he recommends for slowing time down. Hardy contends that when you put his method to work, you can speed up your progress toward your most important goals and spend more time living the life you’ve always wanted.

Zero in on Your Core Values and Goals

Hardy writes that the first step to slowing time is to make choices that align with your values and move you closer to the goals that matter most. That requires gaining a clear understanding of what you value and want most in your life. When you start to think about your days in terms of the distances you can travel rather than the hours you can fill, you can more easily determine how it would be most meaningful to use your time.

For example, you might realize that one of your core values is spending time with your family and think about how frequently (or infrequently) you see your parents. You can do the “depressing math” to determine how much time you’ll likely spend with them if you continue to see them at your current rate. If you don’t like the results, you can choose to see them more often. You’re still looking at the same amount of time passing, but you’re figuring out how to use that time to do something you value: spending time with your family.

(Shortform note: Hardy doesn’t offer specific advice for determining your values and goals, but other writers have offered some practical advice. In The Happiness Trap, psychologist Russ Harris explains that values involve behaviors that continue throughout our lives, while goals are objectives we can complete. Harris contends that finding our values is an ongoing process. We don’t necessarily choose our values. Instead, we develop them as we face challenges and decide how to move forward. On the other hand, we actively choose our goals, and Harris notes that we have to intentionally select goals that align with our values. If you set a goal that conflicts with your values, you’ll just make yourself unhappy trying to reach it.)

Hardy recommends identifying which of your goals are most important to you and putting aside everything else, including work that you find unsatisfying or tasks that you consider unfulfilling. You might need to put aside things that seem meaningful or fulfilling, too: Hardy contends that if you have more than three major goals, you need to narrow your focus. While this requires foregoing some opportunities, that’s a necessary part of pursuing your most important goals. Once you’ve identified your vision for your life, Hardy recommends committing to it wholeheartedly. But along the way, you shouldn’t be afraid to course-correct to keep yourself on track toward your goals.

(Shortform note: While three goals might sound arbitrary, Hardy isn’t the only expert to say it’s a good limit. Good to Great author Jim Collins contends that having more than three priorities is equivalent to having none. Similarly, Randi Zuckerberg writes in Pick Three that you can choose only three things to focus on daily among work, sleep, family, friends, and fitness. She explains that it’s not practical or sustainable to emphasize all five daily. On the other hand, The One Thing author Gary Keller contends that you should focus on just one task each day, treating it as one of the dominos you need to knock down in pursuit of your goal.)

Find Other People Moving in the Same Direction You’re Going

A second strategy to speed up your progress toward your goals is to find other people you can learn from and travel alongside. Hardy explains that this might involve finding a mentor or joining a group of people working to achieve goals that are similar to yours. You can enter the slipstream of these individuals or groups and look for wormholes along the way.

Traveling alongside people who are slowing time can also be helpful because not everyone will understand what you’re doing. Hardy notes that when you use slipstream time hacking, you’re departing from the status quo and acquiring knowledge or experiencing change at a pace that might feel unfamiliar to others in your life. Some people who don’t understand what you’re doing might try to discourage you. For example, people in Picasso’s time didn’t understand what he was doing in his paintings. But by developing Cubism, he pushed art forward at an incredible speed—even if people didn’t like how his paintings demanded that they look at art in a new way.

(Shortform note: As Hardy points out, people aren’t always supportive or understanding when you make big moves in your career. So experts like Tony Robbins contend that you should surround yourself with people who challenge and inspire you. Similarly, in Who Will Cry When You Die?, Robin Sharma explains that it’s crucial to benefit from the support and wisdom of other people as you work toward fulfilling your purpose in life. He recommends building a group of three or four friends committed to supporting each other as you each pursue your goals. He also writes that many people benefit from hiring a life coach, trying to meet their heroes, and putting effort into building strong friendships that not only give them support but also bring them joy.)

Hardy recommends that as you find your path, you should also seek out ways to help other people slow down time, too. He explains that the goal should be for everybody to slow time and live more meaningful lives as individuals and as a community. If we all work together, everyone can learn to slow time in their own lives. You can help others toward that goal by using your skills in slipstream time hacking.

(Shortform note: Many people agree with Hardy that we should use our advantages and access to create opportunities for others to live better lives. But others think it’s also important for people with power and privilege to tear down the systems that afforded them those benefits in the first place, creating a more just world for everyone. Feminist writer and philosopher Audre Lorde famously wrote, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Lorde warned that we can’t use the tools of oppressive systems to liberate ourselves or others from the inequality caused by those systems. That might be an argument for using slipstream time hacking not to succeed within existing systems but to forge new paths for yourself and others.)

Set Up Your Day to Help You Slow Down

A third step you can take to practice slipstream time hacking is to structure your days around the goal of slowing time. Hardy writes that many people hurry through their lives and spend their days rushing toward deadlines or goals. By letting this process consume their time and attention, they speed up their time rather than slowing it down. But you can avoid this pitfall by cultivating habits that slow time down every day. In the next section, we’ll consider three habits that Hardy recommends cultivating so you can slow time on a daily basis.

Build Routines That Help You Get More Out of Your Time

First, Hardy recommends starting your day with a consistent routine. Sticking to a routine not only curtails the problem of decision fatigue—the phenomenon where making decisions depletes your mental and physical energy—but can also help you to focus on your most important priorities and start dilating time at the beginning of your day. (Shortform note: Establishing a morning routine is often cited as a smart way to guard against decision fatigue. However, that only works if your morning routine avoids adding more decisions to your day. To minimize morning decisions, you can pick an outfit, pack your lunch, and make a to-do list the night before. Come morning, you can just focus on your routine and your priorities for the day.)

Hardy also advises building routines that enable you to experience “flow”—the state of mind where you become fully and purposefully immersed in a task, as explained by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow—because when you’re in this state of consciousness, time seems to slow down. (Shortform note: While Hardy recommends using “flow” states to slow time down, Csikszentmihalyi explains that when you enter a flow state, you might feel like time has slowed down or like it’s passing more quickly. But whether flow speeds time up or slows it down, learning to cultivate this unique mental state can help you focus all your attention on what you’re doing. That, in turn, can help you make faster progress toward your goals.)

Don’t Let Tasks Demand More Time Than They Deserve

Second, Hardy advises that you should curb the tendency to spend too much time on tasks you could complete more quickly. Hardy explains that according to Parkinson’s Law, your work will take up all the time you allot for it. In other words, the more time you set aside for a task, the more time it will take. He also contends that if you think a task is unimportant, it will take a long time to finish it. Similarly, if you think a task is complicated, it will take longer to complete.

(Shortform note: Parkinson’s Law was created by historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson, who wrote in a 1955 satirical essay that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Parkinson’s concern wasn’t so much about how everyday people spend their time but about the tendency of bureaucracy to expand even with fewer people and less work to oversee. That said, his premise is that the complexity of a task tends to increase as we allot more time to it. The observation might help explain why tasks we’ve put off just get more daunting: When we procrastinate on tasks that don’t feel valuable or those that make us feel unpleasant emotions like anxiety or self-doubt, those tasks then take us even longer to complete.)

Hardy’s solution for our inefficiency with our time—in addition to working only on the most important tasks—is to stop setting expectations that make tasks take up more time than necessary. In other words, don’t set aside needlessly large chunks of time for tasks. He recommends breaking tasks down into smaller pieces that are easier to accomplish quickly. (Shortform note: Hardy’s advice for countering Parkinson’s Law aligns with other psychologists' suggestions. Experts recommend setting realistic deadlines that help you get things done as soon as possible, writing down your goals, tracking your progress toward them, prioritizing your tasks and breaking them down into smaller pieces, and taking regular breaks.)

Focus on Being Present

Finally, Hardy writes that it’s important to spend time every day focused on the people around you. Remember that the point of slipstream time hacking is to make your life more meaningful. One way to do that is to take advantage of the slowing of time to be more present with the people in your life. For many of us, one of the things we value most is the time we get to spend with our family, friends, and community. Slipstream time hacking can give you more of that time—but you have to be present and mindful to enjoy it.

(Shortform note: People have long struggled to avoid distraction and to remain present and mindful—as illustrated by Henry David Thoreau’s concerns about distraction in his 1854 book Walden. Many experts recommend practicing mindfulness to be present with the people in your life and stay alert to what you experience. In The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris writes that mindfulness entails deliberately existing in the present and being aware of and receptive to what you experience. Researchers have found that mindfulness can help you improve your focus, reduce stress, become less emotionally reactive, and develop flexibility in your thinking.)