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This report from New Scientist basically boils down this - the more aware you are of the passage of time, the faster that time seems to go by. By reducing your perception of how much time is actually ticking by, and by allowing yourself to slow down, to think, to be more aware of where you are and what you are doing, to even become bored, the more likely you are to feel that time is passing by much more slowly.

Which all seems sort of obvious. But still fascinating :

Mike Hall has taught himself to stretch time. He uses his powers to make him a better squash player. “It’s hard to describe, but it’s a feeling of stillness, like I’m not trapped in sequential time any more,” he says. “The ball still darts around, but it moves around the court at different speeds depending on the circumstances. It’s like I’ve stepped out of linear time.”

Hall, a sports coach from Edinburgh, UK, is talking about a state of mind known as “the zone”. He puts his abilities down to 12 years of studying the martial art t’ai chi, and now makes a living teaching other sportspeople how to “go faster by going slower”.

For most people, getting into “the zone” at work or home isn’t a realistic option. But the idea of stretching time - or at least having more control over its frantic pace - is an attractive one. And there may be things we can do. There is a growing understanding of how our brains measure the passage of time, and it turns out we have more conscious control over it than previously thought.

…as everyone knows, time flies when you’re absorbed in a task and drags when you’re bored. But now researchers are beginning to understand the reasons for these subjective distortions of time. Some even think it will one day be possible to manipulate our perception of time whenever we feel like it.

So how might we alter our experience of time? The first option might be to manipulate brain chemistry, in particular the dopamine system. Patients with disorders of this system, such as Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s or schizophrenia, also suffer disturbances in their perception of time. It turns out this is because their neurochemistry - specifically their dopamine system - somehow alters the speed of their subjective internal clock. “Schizophrenics have too much dopamine activity in the brain so their clock is so fast that it feels like the whole world is crazy,” says Meck. “If you block dopamine receptors with drugs you can bring the speed of their internal clock back to an acceptable level.”

Recreational drugs that affect the dopamine system can also alter our perception of time. Stimulants such as cocaine, caffeine and nicotine make time pass faster, while sedatives such as Valium and cannabis slow it down.

So would the dopamine system be a place to start the hunt for designer drugs that alter our perception of time? Perhaps. The pharmacological knowledge is certainly there, says Meck. “I think it would be possible to develop a boutique drug that did the same but without the addictive properties. I’m sure it could be done if the market was there.” But while we wait for the arrival of the ultimate “chill pill”, what about more natural ways of controlling our internal clock?

When it comes to using the power of the mind to control time perception, one of the most important factors is the attention we pay to the passage of time. According to Meck, although we are rarely conscious of time passing, we keep a subconscious check on our interval-timing system and every now and again consciously access the information. This sporadic attention keeps our perception of the passage of time chugging along nicely.

But if for some reason we disengage attention from the clock, our sense of time can go astray. This accounts for the old adage that “time flies when you’re having fun”, or more accurately, “time flies when you are focusing on something other than the passage of time”. It is equally possible to push the clock in the other direction. At last year’s meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington DC, the Dalai Lama gave a talk to the assembled neuroscientists on how time seems to slow down during meditation, as you focus away from the internal clock. Yet when you surface from meditation, he said, you think more time has passed than actually has. This is uncannily like being in the zone.

Though these effects seem paradoxical, a number of experiments show how the attention we pay - or don’t pay - to the passage of time affects our perception of it. As it turns out, the answer depends on whether you are thinking about time “in the moment” or after the event.

You can stretch your perception of time, but only if you’re prepared to spend it in the equivalent of a waiting room. Perhaps the best option is to just accept the hectic pace of modern life, but make a serious effort to spend at least some of your time doing nothing much.

That might sound like common sense. But according to social psychologist Robert Levine of California State University in Fresno, it is common sense that’s well worth remembering. “Time is our most valuable possession,” he says. “Until the biomedical people can make us live forever, the closest thing we have is to stretch the moment.”

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