THE CHEMISTRY OF IMPATIENCE: WHY YOU CAN’T STAND WAITING 3 SECONDS ANYMORE

We live in an era where everything seems to be accelerating. Technologies are constantly evolving, creating a world where information arrives instantly, yet at the same time, we are becoming increasingly impatient and disconnected. Patience, which was once an almost universal value, now seems like a virtue on the verge of extinction. It’s not just that we’re more impatient – we are also more distracted, immersed in an endless cycle of fast stimuli that leave us empty, unfocused, and often chasing something that never arrives.

At the heart of this phenomenon lies the well-known and often misunderstood dopamine, the neurotransmitter that regulates our reward behaviors. I say this because it truly motivates us, drives us to seek something rewarding, but at the same time, it can lead us into a vicious cycle of seeking increasingly immediate and elusive stimuli. Dopamine conditions us to expect quick and easy rewards, activating our neural circuits with the promise of instant pleasure.

The big problem is that in the digital age, the “designs” of products, social networks, and betting platforms have been shaped precisely to exploit this impulse: the need for immediate gratification. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube were created to keep users constantly engaged, offering unpredictable rewards that reinforce rapid consumption behavior. It’s as if we were playing an invisible slot machine, where each notification or “like” feeds our desire for more, keeping us permanently unsatisfied and hungry for further stimuli.

It’s no longer just about productivity. Urgency has become a moral ideal. We live under the tyranny of “being busy means being valuable,” where anyone who slows down is labeled as lazy, outdated, or out of the game.

But here’s the trap: the more we run, the less we realize we’re trapped.

Studies from the London Business School (2023) indicate that executives with chronically overloaded schedules develop “strategic attentional blindness”: they are effective at the micro level but incapable of thinking long term — which makes them vulnerable to disruption.

Haste has become a lens that distorts priorities, sabotages relationships, and creates a crisis of presence — at work, in families, and within ourselves.

This systemic acceleration is not neutral: it shapes our neural circuits, redefines what we consider urgent, and silences the deeper voices of intuition and creativity. Time has ceased to be fertile ground and has become slippery soil — where planting lasting ideas seems impossible.

And here lies the crucial point: this is not a scheduling problem. It is a problem of mental design.

But how does this affect our perception of time?

As we feed on these instant rewards, our perception of time begins to shift. What once felt like a natural wait, something tolerable, is now torture. Remember that uncomfortable feeling when a YouTube video doesn’t load in seconds, or when a messaging app takes too long to open? This happens because our brain, conditioned by dopamine, begins to perceive every second of waiting as wasted time. Not just a waste, but a sense of failure.

The Trap of the “Now”

This leads us to a state of immediacy. We live in constant pursuit of something to fill the immediate void — whether it’s a phone notification, a new bet, or even new content to consume. This cycle of instant gratification creates a deeper void in us because, unlike a genuine and meaningful reward, it only offers a superficial sensation of pleasure. We are consumed by the illusion that something better is always ahead, when in fact, this constant rush prevents us from experiencing the present fully.

The Hurry That Consumes Us

Now, imagine the scenario of a “better,” someone addicted to gambling and games like the infamous “Tiger Game.” Each spin is a promise of gratification, each bet an invitation to anxiety, and every passing second increases the pressure to win. In this context, the perception of time is completely distorted — the individual feels they must act fast, not only to reach the reward but to avoid loss, failure, the void. The game becomes a powerful metaphor for how modern society deals with time and impatience. Every second without a response is a risk, and this rush makes us increasingly unable to handle calm and silence.

The Effect of Social Media

Nowadays, the impulsive behavior of a “better” in the digital casino is, in a way, the same we see on social media. Picture yourself once again scrolling through Instagram or checking your notifications. The cycle is the same: you expose yourself to the stimulus, await the response and the reward. This need for instant validation, for “likes” and interactions, traps us in a short-term mindset, where the future, the process, and patience fall into the background.

How Can We Break This Cycle?

The good news is that although technologies and consumption patterns have shaped our brains, we still have the capacity to regain control. We can train our minds to resist this acceleration of time. We can learn to wait, to slow down, to relearn the art of patience, which may be more valuable than ever.
Today I want to explore how this cycle of haste and impatience not only affects our ability to live in the present but also our mental health, productivity, and happiness. More importantly, let’s understand how we can reverse this process and regain control over what we consume, how we consume it, and most importantly, how we choose to spend our time.

The Tragedy of “Phantom Time”

Your brain is being hacked. Yes, it’s true! Not by a virus, but by an invisible design that turned seconds of waiting into psychological torture. Neuroscience reveals: modern impatience is not a character flaw — it’s a biochemical hijacking. And the culprit has a name: dopamine in a loop.

Studies conducted at the MIT Media Lab suggest that the average adult loses between 2.1 and 3.1 years of their life per decade to micro-distractions that seem harmless: notifications, constant tab switching, unnecessary meetings, and the eternal email shuffle. This phenomenon, which I call Time Ghosting, not only dilutes our presence but weakens our capacity to produce with depth and focus.

As we fragment our attention, time seems to slip through our fingers. Ignacio Morgado Bernal, a neuroscientist from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, emphasizes that continuous stress and stimulus overload distort our perception of time, creating a constant sense of scarcity. The truth is we are becoming increasingly disconnected from the natural flow of time as well as the reality of real life.

Waiting, which once might have been a peaceful pause, has now become a burden. And the data doesn’t lie. “Phantom time” — the time you lose without realizing it, that slips through the cracks of your focus — is real. This constant acceleration, combined with mass distractions, is turning us into temporal nomads, wandering through a distorted perception of time and productivity.

The Dopamine Effect and the “Tiger Game”

The relationship between platforms like TikTok and slot machines is not just a coincidence. There is a more perverse mechanism at play: the “variable interval reward” (Skinner, 1957), now turbocharged by algorithms. A study by the University of Bergen (2023) found that:

• Social media users develop dopamine tolerance, requiring more stimuli to feel the same pleasure (exactly like substance addicts).
• Waiting 3 seconds for a video to load activates the anterior insula, a brain region linked to physical pain. Yes: waiting has become neural suffering.

This cycle of incessant search for rapid stimuli causes the brain to suffer micro-stress every time there is an interruption or delay. MIT researchers call this “cumulative cognitive taxation” — and it consumes 19% more mental energy than linear tasks (Nature Human Behaviour, 2024).

This situation is analogous to what happens in high-pressure environments, such as the financial market, where traders are constantly pressured by time. Recent studies show that decisions made under pressure activate the nucleus accumbens (addiction area), instead of the prefrontal cortex (rational thinking). The result? Choices that are 72% riskier — whether in betting or impulse purchases.

Now, imagine what happens when you live permanently immersed in this state of “cognitive hurry.” And as I’ve said before, the Tiger Game is a perfect metaphor for this modern trap: you’re constantly searching for the next “perfect spin,” the next sensation, while losing sight of rationality and control. And the worst part: even knowing the risks, you keep playing.

The Game of Impatience: How Our Brain Is Losing

In this whirlwind of distractions, our perception of time becomes distorted. The phenomenon of Time Ghosting can be seen as a metaphor for the modern world: we lose minutes, hours, and even years in search of something that always eludes us — an immediate reward. This affects our performance, our productivity, and, most importantly, our mental health.

And here arises the central question: how can we break this cycle? How can we regain control over our attention, cultivating patience and awareness in the process?

When Boredom Becomes a Luxury and Silence a Threat

Research from the University of Virginia revealed that 67% of people prefer receiving electric shocks over spending 15 minutes in silence without any external stimulus. Though shocking, the experiment reveals a hard truth: we are losing our tolerance for boredom — that state of stimulus absence, essential for creative incubation and for strengthening our mental health.

This phenomenon is not merely a matter of momentary discomfort. It is tied to a profound shift in human behavior, a change that reflects a growing fear of emptiness and silence — conditions that once served as sources of reflection, introspection, and of course, creativity. In a world saturated with notifications, instant content, and rapid responses, boredom has become a luxury, and silence, a threat.

The Science of Fertile Discomfort

Why is it so difficult today to be alone with our own thoughts? The answer lies in how our minds react to boredom — a phenomenon that for a long time was essential to the development of innovative ideas. Neuroscience shows us that the human brain, when not overloaded with stimuli, activates a network called the Default Mode Network (DMN). When this network is active, the mind wanders, which allows the brain to organize information, generate new connections, and even create new ideas.

However — and I hope this is already clear — the constant use of devices and the overload of external stimuli are deactivating this vital network, with serious impacts on brain function, psychological well-being, and mental health. As a result, we are experiencing a “creativity crisis” and a depletion of our capacity for deep and considered decision-making. We are literally emptying ourselves as Beings.

When Boredom Becomes a Luxury: The Silence that Heals

The aversion to boredom we observe in people is a direct consequence of this disconnection from the Default Mode Network. According to the Harvard Business Review (2024), professionals who don’t cultivate idle moments have 28% fewer original ideas. This happens because the brain, without rest periods, misses the opportunity to consolidate information and generate new connections. Additionally, neuroscientists at the Mayo Clinic discovered that DMN activation is crucial for learning consolidation — without it, we forget 40% faster.

Another serious effect of this disconnection is the weakening of our memory and our empathy. Researchers at Stanford have proven that just 15 minutes a day of contemplation or introspection increases our ability to understand others’ emotions by 31%. The lack of this space for “nothingness” leads us, therefore, not only to cognitive impoverishment, but also to emotional impoverishment.

Why Does This Hurt So Much?

Neurologically speaking, part of the problem lies in neurochemistry. Dopamine—the neurotransmitter of desire—is activated every time we seek immediate responses, notifications, or small wins. The problem? The brain learns to associate speed with pleasure—and like any addiction, it begins to demand more and more stimulation to feel the same level of satisfaction.

This mechanism explains why we feel anxious when a video takes 3 seconds to load, or why we replace deep conversation with frantic scrolling. It’s not just behavior. It’s an unconscious redesign of our motivational circuitry.
So, the answer lies in the neurochemistry of boredom. When we disconnect from the constant flow of stimuli, the brain undergoes a process that may feel distressing, but is, in fact, essential to our mental and creative health. Here’s how it works:

1. Minutes 1–3: Dopamine, the reward neurotransmitter, crashes. This process generates physiological anxiety—an immediate sense of discomfort.
2. Minutes 4–7: The prefrontal cortex—responsible for planning and decision-making—enters a “purpose panic” as it is no longer engaged in tasks with immediate gratification.
3. Minute 8+: If we resist the urge to escape that discomfort, something magical happens: the Default Mode Network (DMN) kicks in and begins to operate in the background, promoting creative thinking, problem-solving, and even strengthening our empathetic abilities.

However, there’s a disturbing paradox: while science proves that boredom and silence are essential to our mental health and creativity, the digital economy—driven by the need to constantly capture our attention—profits billions by eliminating these essential conditions. By keeping us perpetually connected and overwhelmed with information, the digital industry pushes us further away from the deepest and most creative states of our minds.

This phenomenon clearly reflects impatience and an obsession with immediate stimuli. Boredom and silence, once fertile ground for reflection and creation, are now seen as threats—a “gap” to be filled with more and more stimuli.

And the cost? As I’ve said before, it’s the loss of creativity, empathy, and depth. The loss of time. And perhaps most seriously, the loss of ourselves.

What we’re witnessing is not just a crisis of time—but an existential crisis. In a world where every second feels like a race, the continuous distraction imposed by the digital economy creates a disconnection not only from the external world but, more importantly, from our own being. When we can no longer sustain stillness—the very space required for deep reflection—the mind deteriorates. And what follows are devastating side effects on the mental and behavioral health of millions.

According to recent data from the World Health Organization, anxiety and depression are now the most prevalent health conditions globally. Depression affects more than 300 million people worldwide. Anxiety, once a natural response to stress, has become a chronic condition fueled by a constant sense of urgency. The lack of pause—time to process and reflect—is one of the biggest contributors to this scenario. Every message, notification, and alert keeps our brains in a state of cognitive overload, diminishing our ability to process experiences effectively and in an emotionally healthy way.

Alienation

The impact goes even deeper: alienation. When we are flooded by rapid, shallow stimuli, we begin to lose the ability to connect with others in an empathetic and meaningful way. We distance ourselves from what we might call the real world. Relationships—whether personal or professional—become fragile, based on quick, often hollow interactions, where depth and genuine care are left behind. We live in a vicious cycle in which the relentless pursuit of attention distances us from what truly matters—deep understanding of ourselves and others.

This phenomenon is not limited to psychological and social consequences. It also reflects in how we relate to time. Increasingly, time is perceived as a scarce resource—and it is precisely this perception of scarcity that fuels the constant pressure for efficiency and speed. When we’re unable to slow down, what’s at stake is not just our mental health, but our identity. How can we truly understand who we are if we’re always chasing the next stimulus, the next task, the next click?

We are, therefore, losing the ability to live in the present moment—the essence of what the Greeks called Kairós—the opportune and meaningful time, the space where we can be creative, profound, and above all, human. The acceleration of Chronos—clock time and urgency—has pushed us away from this essential state of presence.

That’s why what is at stake is not merely an individual issue of mental overload, but a collective crisis affecting society as a whole. We are, in fact, building digital bubbles—seeking comfort and distraction in a world increasingly detached from what makes us human. This relentless search for more and more stimulation, without the necessary pause for the reflective and the profound, could lead us to the loss of our very essence.

When Hurry Becomes Ideology: The Invisible Cost of Accelerating Everything

By now, I hope it’s clear: this is no longer just about productivity. Urgency has become a moral ideal. We live under the tyranny of “being busy is being valuable,” where slowing down is seen as laziness, irrelevance, or being out of the game.

But here lies the trap: the faster we run, the less we realize we are stuck.

Research from the London Business School (2023) shows that executives with chronically overloaded schedules develop “strategic attentional blindness”: they’re effective in the short term but incapable of long-term thinking—making them vulnerable to disruption.

Hurry has become a lens that distorts priorities, sabotages relationships, and creates a crisis of presence—alongside senseless conflicts often fueled by egos distorted through dependency—at work, in families, and within ourselves.

What I mean is this: the human brain was not designed to operate in continuous sprint mode. The prefrontal cortex—responsible for strategic thinking, empathy, and conscious decision-making—suffers micro-collapses when exposed to overstimulation and urgency. The result? Impulsive decisions, fragmented relationships, and a deep impoverishment of inner life amidst the chaos of stress.

In 2024, Stanford University published a study that laid this bare: leaders under constant time pressure showed a 38% drop in self-reflective capacity and a 42% reduction in cognitive empathy—two essential pillars of conscious leadership. Chronic urgency doesn’t just compromise outcomes. It silently dehumanizes us.

THE REHABILITATION OF TIME

We must relearn how to wait. To rehabilitate time as a living experience, not as an obstacle between one goal and another. Waiting, when conscious, is fertile ground for intuition, deep listening, and insight.

Philosophers like Byung-Chul Han have already warned us: continuous acceleration does not make us more productive — only more superficial. We are overdosing on “doing” and starving from a lack of “being.”

That’s why slowing down is, today, a subversive act. An exercise in freedom amidst the colonization of attention. And perhaps, more than ever, a path to reconnect intelligence with wisdom.

That’s why I insist without interruption: we need a new pedagogy of time. One that not only teaches calendar management but the cultivation of presence. That values not just speed, but discernment.

The future of leadership, mental health, and creativity lies not in doing more, but in doing with more soul.

“Slowness, when conscious, is not delay. It is precision.”
– Marcello de Souza

REDESIGNING THE BRAIN TO INHABIT TIME

The answer is not to romanticize slowness. But to redesign the way our neurobiology interacts with time. That’s what I propose with the concept of Temporal Neurodesign: a model that combines neuroscience principles with conscious management practices and strategic intentionality — not to do more, but to live with more depth.

“Dona Maria, 58, checks her phone 23 times a day between pots and laundry. Ricardo, CEO of a multinational, sleeps with his email open on his tablet. Both feel time slipping away. The difference? He has an assistant. She has only guilt. But neuroscience reveals: the remedy is the same.”

A study by the Max Planck Institute (2024), with 2,000 people aged 18 to 75, revealed that 92% suffer from decision fatigue due to digital microchoices. However, those who practiced presence blocks — 15 minutes per day of full attention — showed a 31% increase in time satisfaction, a 45% drop in cortisol, and a 27% improvement in working memory (Nature Human Behaviour, 2024).

The time that matters is not clock time. It is perceived, lived, embodied time. And that is trainable.

Temporal Neurodesign: The Silent Antidote to the Era of Chronic Anxiety

If time has become an invisible battlefield, Temporal Neurodesign emerges as an integrative proposal to disarm the internal war between acceleration and presence. It is not a technique, but a mental ecology: a way to reprogram the nervous system to sustain deep attention, wise decision-making, and authentic human connection in a world that encourages the opposite.
Here are its five pillars:

1. Attention Black Holes: The Time That Disappears Without a Trace

Each notification that interrupts your focus doesn’t just “take seconds” — it breaks essential neurobiological cycles required for complex reasoning. Cognitive neuroscience research shows that after each distraction, the brain takes an average of 23 minutes to return to the previous level of depth (University of California, Irvine).
Key question: How much of your genius is being drained by interruptions that seem harmless but accumulate an invisible cost throughout the day?

2. Strategic Boredom: The Space the Brain Needs to Be Creative

Boredom is dopamine detox. It’s in the void of distractions that original thought arises. The problem? Our culture has trained the brain to seek fast rewards — and any pause becomes discomfort.

The practice of strategic boredom — intentional periods of doing nothing — activates the Default Mode Network, the neural network responsible for creativity, empathy, and long-term planning. Stopping is not wasting time. It’s expanding it.

3. Ritualizing Time: How to Turn Chaos into Regenerative Cycles

Instead of reacting to time as an uncontrollable flow, Temporal Neurodesign proposes the construction of neuro-compatible rituals: small milestones that organize the subjective experience of the day.

From the “day-opening ritual” to the “sleep-transition ritual,” these moments signal to the brain the beginning and end of cycles, reducing basal anxiety and increasing neurological predictability.

The brain loves rhythm. Chaos exhausts it.

4. Intentional Design of Attention: Steering the Mind Like a Beam of Light

Attention is not infinite. It is a limited — and valuable — neurobiological resource. Designing your environment (digital and physical) to protect attention is a radical act of cognitive autonomy.

This includes techniques like ultradian-based time-blocking and the elimination of visual triggers that hijack the prefrontal cortex. An environment can be a friend or an enemy of your focus — and this is designable.

5. Deep Time: From Chronological Quantity to Kairotic Quality

Finally, Temporal Neurodesign invites us to reconnect with Kairos — the time of the soul, of presence, of lived experience. Here, it’s not duration that matters, but the density of the moment.

A silent cup of coffee can be more restorative than three hours in a digitally hyperconnected resort.
Training deep time is relearning to listen to the body, silence stimuli, and allow the mind to descend into deeper layers of reflection — where what has not yet been said already pulses.

From Rush to Purpose

Speed alone doesn’t make us effective. It makes us reactive. And a reactive brain is incapable of envisioning new possibilities — it merely responds to stimuli, like a conditioned reflex.

Temporal Neurodesign is not an invitation to slowness. It’s engineering presence. A science applied to reconnecting with what truly matters — at the right pace, at the right time, with the right mind. Because in the end, it’s not time we lack. It’s our capacity to inhabit it fully.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE DUAL TEMPORALITY

A pioneering study from the University of Zurich (2024) scanned the brains of 300 people while they performed timed activities (Chronos) and significant experiences (Kairós). The results show how each type of time affects our brains in distinct ways:

• In Chronos:
• The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (responsible for planning) is activated.
• Norepinephrine, the urgency hormone, is released.
•
• In Kairós:
• The insula and cingulate cortex (responsible for body and emotional awareness) light up.
• Oxytocin, the connection hormone, is released.
The secret? Those who consciously alternate between these two times experience a 43% increase in well-being, according to the Journal of Neuroscience (March 2024).

HOW TO PRACTICE THE DANCE OF TIMES (FROM OFFICE TO HOME)

1. SMART CHRONOS (For those with “things to do”)
• “Pulse” Technique (adaptation of time blocking):
• 55 minutes of intense focus (not 90 minutes! This duration respects the brain’s natural attention cycle).
• 5 minutes of conscious transition: stretch, hydrate, take a break.
• Based on research from the Mayo Clinic, involving both blue-collar workers and CEOs.
• For parents:
• “Sacred half-hour blocks”: e.g., from 9:00 AM to 9:30 AM, only household tasks.
• Use a visible timer: studies show that seeing the time reduces anxiety by up to 27%.

2. ACCESSIBLE KAIRÓS (For those seeking more meaning in activities)
• Micro-rituals of presence:
• Before a meal: 1 deep breath (activates the insula, promoting fuller presence).
• When answering calls: stand up (this changes the perception of urgency and improves posture).
• Adapted flow:
• Marta (cleaning lady): turn cleaning into “moving meditation,” focusing on textures.
• Executives: hold meetings while walking, as synchronized steps boost creativity by 33%.
(Data: The Flow Research Collective, 2023 – 12,000 cases studied)

THE EXPERIMENT THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH TIME

Stanford researchers created the “Dual Clock Challenge,” a simple exercise that combines both times:

• Chronos Mode: List 3 urgent tasks for the day.
• Kairós Mode: For each task, ask:
• “How can I do this with full attention?”
• “What meaning does this bring to my life?”
After 30 days of practice, the results showed that:
• 89% of participants reported a sense of “more subjective time.”
• The frequency of checking the clock decreased by 41%.

THE GREAT REVELATION

As Ramon Bayés had already intuited, time is not to be controlled — it is to be inhabited. And neuroscience now confirms this:
Those who practice the integration of Chronos and Kairós experience the following benefits:
• 35% lower cortisol levels (reducing stress).
• 22% greater activity in the hippocampus (improving memory and learning).
• Synchronization between brain hemispheres (resulting in a more balanced brain).
(Source: Max Planck Institute, study with functional MRI)

TO START NOW

Dual Clock:
• In the morning: Plan a task in Chronos mode + an experience in Kairós mode.
• At night: Write down how you felt about each.

Presence Alarm:
• 3 times a day, stop and ask yourself:
o “Am I counting minutes or living them?”
“Time is not a straight line — it is a spiral where each turn can be richer than the last.”
(P.S.: I wrote this article between 47-minute Chronos blocks, interspersed with breaks to observe sparrows at the window — my personal Kairós.)

Time, Mythology, and Conscious Choice

Out of curiosity, it’s worth remembering that in Greek mythology, Chronos is not just the god of time, but the very embodiment of linearity and relentlessness. He devours everything he touches, dragging the future into an eternal present, where the moment becomes a prison. The vision we often have of Chronos is that of an unsustainable force that corrupts the flow of life itself, turning time into something to be consumed, an endless sequence of obligations and fleeting moments.

On the other hand, Kairós, the other god of time, is the moment that transcends chronology. He is not controlled by the timeline, but rather is the point of opportunity, the space between the acceleration of daily life and the depth of lived experience. He teaches that time can be felt, seen, and touched in its fullness, unlike Chronos, who quantifies it without mercy. Kairós invites us to seize what is available here and now, to live at a pace that aligns with our nature, not with the gears of the clock.

This mythical dualism, where Chronos represents controlled and mechanical time, and Kairós represents lived and experienced time, directly reflects in our contemporary lives. The acceleration of the modern world, the pressure for productivity, and the urgency are traits of an era where Chronos dominates. However, Kairós, with its serenity and meaning, reminds us of the power of presence and the importance of living not only the time that passes but the time that is lived in its entirety.

If 2025 is the year you still find yourself dominated by hurry, I ask: how much of your being is still truly intact? Time, this irreversible essence, is the only resource that, once lost, never returns. And while urgency has hijacked our attention, the great revelation is that the choice is ours: the possibility to reclaim time and inhabit the present with awareness.

It’s not how much Chronos commands us, but how we can dance with him, alternating between the time of productivity and the time of genuine presence of Kairós. Those who are capable of integrating these two dimensions not only manage their time but master their existence by creating spaces to live it in its fullness and meaning.

Now, I ask you, reader: Are you ready to free yourself from the yoke of Chronos and reclaim Kairós as a daily practice of connection and presence? Or will you continue to be a mere spectator in the uninterrupted flow of time?

(P.S.: This article was written in 120 minutes between Chronos and Kairós, and of course with the phone on airplane mode. An intentional irony — to remind you that even time can be an ally if we know how to use it.)

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