Why Does the Way Back Always Feel Shorter?
By: Tyler Bullock
Tags: Job Search, Perception, Personal Development, Psychology, Expectations

What a psychological phenomenon can teach us about expectations and living a happier life.

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve always been curious about the phenomenon of the “return trip effect” — the perception of a return trip taking less time than the initial trip despite being equal in distance and time.

I’ve noticed this many, many times in my life. Whether it’s something physical like hiking or walking, or something more mental like long-haul flights or car rides, it just seems like “time flies” much faster on the way back.

My Recent Experience with the Return Trip Effect

I’ve recently started running, and I go the exact same “out-and-back” route every time. The route starts at my house, goes onto a bike trail and eventually takes me through a tunnel to a neighboring town. I’ve been adding a little bit of distance every time, but I’ve noticed that the first half of the run always seems longer and harder than the second half.

I used to think that familiarity played a big role in this — I figured the trip felt longer because I was using a lot of processing power to take in my surroundings on the way there, but didn’t need to process as much on the way back because I was now familiar with the route.

But I’ve been running the same route every time! And I’ve noticed return trips seeming shorter in situations even when I’m already familiar with the route. So how does that make sense?

Upon further research (namely this 2011 study on the Return Trip Effect), familiarity with the route is actually not the main reason we think the return route is shorter. It actually circles back to the expectations we had before the trip even begins.

Humans have a habit of constantly underestimating how long things take, so we will often expect the initial trip to be shorter than it is. We’ll say, “Ah, this trip should go pretty quickly!”

And when that trip is inevitably longer than we expected, we say: “Gee whiz, that was a long trip!”, even though it was only long because we thought it would be short.

Now we have more realistic expectations for the return trip, and thus experience it as being shorter than the initial trip.

But the only difference was our expectation going into each leg of the trip. A simple shift in expectations can completely change the way we experience time in virtually identical situations. That’s crazy!

Expectations Can Shift Reality

I thought this was pretty interesting because it takes this whole idea from “Hmm, it’s interesting that return trips always seem shorter” to “Wow, our expectations can completely shift the way we perceive time itself”.

It really demonstrates the power that expectations have on our perception of reality!

Expectations help us to better understand and predict what will happen in the world around us. When we put coffee grounds into the coffee maker, fill it with water, and press “Start”, we expect a pot of coffee to be brewed. When we say “Thank you”, we often expect a response like “You’re welcome”. Without any expectations, we’d be walking around in a continual state of surprise at everything that happens. That would be unbearable!

But I think expectations become problematic when we become emotionally invested in them. I’m actually experiencing this right now!

I’m graduating in a couple weeks and I’m currently job hunting pretty hard. I’ve already had three situations where I was fully expecting to get to the next stage of the process. I thought I had the perfect background and felt I was a “no-doubt” top candidate for each one. I was rejected for all three. And each time I became extremely discouraged, almost physically feeling my soul get crushed a bit each time. And each time it took me one or two days to get back on the horse again.

Those negative reactions were purely a result of my high expectations and my relationship to them. I believed that I knew what should happen and what would happen, and I became emotionally invested in that outcome.

Expectations are nothing more than an educated guess, a way for your mind to predict what is going to happen in a given situation. We get into trouble when we take our expectations as concrete realities and become emotionally invested in them. The more we buy in to our own expectations, the more emotional pain we feel when they don’t align with reality.

If I had tempered my expectations and trusted that whatever happened was meant to happen, I would likely have been slightly disappointed, assessed what I could have done better, and went on with my day. But my expectations instead led to a reality that was so different from what I expected that I was thoroughly nonplussed by the situation — confused, angry, and discouraged enough to stop applying to jobs for the day. In both scenarios, the world around me was completely the same — I was sitting at my desk, reading a rejection email. But the different relationship with expectations created two wildly different realities for myself — one far less pleasant than the other.

How Can We Use This?

We’re never going to completely stop believing and emotionally investing in our expectations. We will always be disappointed when things don’t go how we wanted. We will always try to predict the future and then express bewilderment when our predictions are inevitably wrong. But what we can do is try and become conscious of our relationship with our expectations.

I’m currently in the final interview stage for a position that I want very badly. The first interview was the best interview I’ve had in my life and it would truly be a dream first job out of college. But I’m trying to learn my lesson from previous disappointments.

I’m telling myself: “If you don’t get this, it’s because it’s not the right opportunity for you at this point in your life. It may seem like it is, but it’s not up to you to decide that. And you couldn’t even if you wanted to! The right opportunity will present itself at the right time.”

I firmly believe this. And even if I didn’t, what other option is there? We can only do our best and trust that things will work out.

In my research for this post, I came across this parable from a Thai Buddhist master named Achaan Chaa:

“You see this goblet?” “For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table, and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, “Of course.” When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

After writing this post, I’m hoping to operate in the world with a more manageable, less emotional relationship with my expectations. I want to live my life like I’m always on the way back, free of the unrealistic expectations and stress of the first leg of the journey. I want to experience reality as authentically as possible, and that means doing what I can to prevent it being distorted and warped by my expectations of what should and will happen.

I want to try and treat my life like the teacher treats the goblet in the parable—understanding that even my expectation of being alive the next day is never fully guaranteed and that each moment is precious.