Why the antidote to our lack of time may lie in the natural world

Do you ever get that feeling that there aren’t enough hours in the day? That time is somehow racing away from you, and it is impossible to fit everything in. But then, you step outside into the countryside and suddenly everything seems slower, more relaxed, like time has somehow changed.

It’s not just you – recent research showed nature can regulate our sense of time.

For many of us, the combined demands of work, home and family mean that we are always feeling like we don’t have enough time. Time poverty has also been exacerbated by digital technologies. Permanent connectivity extends working hours and can make it difficult to switch off from the demands of friends and family.

Recent research suggests that the antidote to our lack of time may lie in the natural world. Psychologist Richardo Correia, at the University of Turku in Finland, found that being in nature may change how we experience time and, perhaps, even give us the sense of time abundance.

Correia examined research which compared people’s experiences of time when they performed different types of tasks in urban and natural environments. These studies consistently showed that people report a sense of expanded time when they were in nature compared to when they were...

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