52 Weeks Of Missed Opportunities? Make The Most Of Every Minute In 2025
Hey Siri, play ‘Timeless’ by The Weeknd.
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I recently watched We Live In Time – the Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh rom-com drama and it quickly became one of my favourite movies of the year. I watched it for 3 main reasons: 1) the marketing of this movie has been remarkable (I think the entire Internet has seen and cannot get enough of Garfield’s Chicken Shop Date episode), 2) the viral carousel horse meme:
3) I’m just a sucker for rom-coms. 🤷🏻♀️
Anyway, the movie was basically about running out of time – how a family tries to make the most out of the little time they have left after Pugh’s character relapses from cancer.
It also made me think about the time that we have – how much or how little we think about time itself, and if we actually take time for granted.
Living in Time?
For most people, ‘life’ happens during the weekends – the weekdays are reserved for boring stuff like work, classes, or chores… basically the things that you ‘need’ to do so you can actually have a life.
If we go about our lives this way, we don’t actually have enough time at all. We get 4 weekends in a month, and having to divide 48 hours between family, friends (all 5 different friend groups), the obligatory festivities such as birthdays or weddings, AND finding pockets of peace for yourself?
It’s a race against time itself.
The Oddball Effect
There’s an interesting theory called the Oddball Effect that basically debunks the age-old adage that says ‘time flies while we’re having fun’.
A study was conducted where participants were shown a picture of a shoe multiple times followed by a picture of a flower. Although the images were all shown for the same length of time, most of ‘em thought the picture of the flower stayed longer on the screen.
What this tells us is that the things we love and the perceived duration of time experiencing it is directly proportional to each other. We have 52 weeks in a year, but how long or how short it feels depends on how much we’re actually enjoying the time we have.
Of course, we can’t all be on vacation for 52 weeks straight, but if we make a conscious effort to slip in things we enjoy between the mundanity of life, our brains actually spend more time processing those events, making it feel like time’s being stretched out while you’re having fun.
“I’ll call them tomorrow.”
It’s a lot more comforting to think that we have all the time in the world. Unless we’re jolted by some unexpected news that forces us to reframe our perspective on time, we loooove taking our sweet time at just about anything in life.
This is why deadlines are actually a good thing (🤮), even if you work on whatever it is the night before. Because it forces you to seize the hours that you have and focus your energy on what matters right now.
And sometimes, all you have is now. Why let another day pass by without telling your friend how much they mean to you or taking your mom out for a cup of coffee?
The time will pass anyway
There is a quote from American author Earl Nightingale that says:
Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.
Between this and the inspiring things that you find in the comment section of TikTok:
It’s safe to say that the way we spend our time matters a lot more than how much time we actually have.
It’s not entirely a downer that time is passing by. It’s only with time that we’re able to build meaningful and lasting relationships with the people that we love and make memories that we can look back on.
But it is an unfortunate thing to let whatever time we have passed without making the most out of it.
If you’re dreading making a decision – for example, if you’re thinking about doing that degree but worried about how long it will take, or if you really want to go on that impromptu day trip with your friends but worried about not having enough time to do your laundry for the week *rolls eyes*, remember that the time will pass anyway, and by the end of it you can either have that degree or the cute pics from the beach, or neither.
If you feel like you didn’t make the most out of your time this year, don’t worry about it!
The truth is, we’ve all felt like we could have done more. But all we need is a lil’ perspective. A new year is literally around the corner.
Here’s to making the most out of our 52 weeks in 2025!! 🥳🥂
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