I discovered something while playing Street Fighter at 3 AM, running on four hours of sleep, completely absorbed in perfecting a single combo. Eight hours had passed. I hadn’t noticed.

The same thing happened last week while coding with Claude, building systems to analyze my sleep data. And the week before that, carving down a mountain on my snowboard. Time kept disappearing.

At first, I thought this was just flow state—that psychological phenomenon where challenge meets skill. But there was something deeper happening. These weren’t just random activities where I lost track of time. They followed a specific pattern.

The Formula

After tracking these experiences in my journal for months, a pattern emerged:

Agency + Interest + Care = Meaningful Action

It’s deceptively simple, but each component is crucial:

• Agency: You chose this. Nobody forced you to learn frame data at midnight or optimize your Viper combos.
• Interest: There’s genuine curiosity driving you forward. What happens if I try this? Can I make this work?
• Care: You actually give a damn about getting better. Not for external validation, but because improvement itself matters to you.

When all three align, time doesn’t just pass quickly—it ceases to exist as a constraint.

The Authenticity Connection

Here’s what I’ve come to understand: that feeling when time disappears? That might be what authenticity actually feels like.

Not authenticity as some fixed “true self” you need to discover, but authenticity as an ongoing process. You’re most yourself not when you’ve “found yourself,” but when you’re so engaged in chosen activity that the question of self becomes irrelevant.

Think about it. When you’re deep in something you chose, something you’re curious about, something you care about improving at—are you worried about being authentic? No. You just are.

The Sleep Paradox

This discovery led to an uncomfortable truth. My Oura ring shows I function surprisingly well on terrible sleep when I’m engaged in something meaningful. Four and a half hours of sleep plus a Street Fighter tournament? Mood: 7/10, Energy: 7/10. Eight hours of sleep with nothing engaging planned? Mood: 5/10, Energy: 5/10.

When you’re engaged in something that hits all three components—agency, interest, and care—your tolerance for suboptimal conditions skyrockets. The complaints disappear. Not because the biological reality changed (my HRV still tanks on poor sleep), but because engagement temporarily overrides depletion signals.

This is dangerous knowledge. Biology doesn’t care about meaning. The debt accumulates regardless. But it explains why we can push through when something truly matters.

Using This as a Compass

The formula becomes a diagnostic tool. When something feels off, check the components:

Low agency? You’re doing something because you “should” rather than because you chose it. The external pressure kills the meaning.

Low interest? You’re going through motions without curiosity. There’s no pull toward the unknown, no “what if?” driving you forward.

Low care? You don’t actually care about improving. Maybe you care about the outcome or the status, but not the craft itself.

Missing any component, and time becomes heavy again. Work becomes work. The magic disappears.

The Application

I’ve started using this formula to make decisions:

Considering a new project? Check: Will I have agency over the direction? Does it genuinely interest me? Do I care about getting better at this specific thing?

Feeling drained? Audit current activities: Where is agency compromised? What no longer sparks interest? What am I pretending to care about?

Designing my day? Protect time for at least one activity that hits all three. Even 30 minutes of chosen, curious, caring engagement can shift an entire day’s energy.

The Warning

There’s a shadow side to this discovery. When you find activities that make time disappear, they can become consuming. The engagement can override not just sleep signals but relationship needs, health requirements, other responsibilities.

The formula for meaning isn’t a formula for balance. It’s a formula for intensity.

Use it wisely.

The Practice

Meaning isn’t something you find. It’s something you create through deliberate engagement. The formula—Agency + Interest + Care—isn’t a destination but a practice.

Choose what to engage with. Stay curious about it. Care about improving. Let time disappear. That temporal distortion isn’t a bug—it’s a signal that you’re onto something real.

When people ask “what’s the meaning of life?” they’re asking the wrong question. The right question is: “What can I choose to be interested in and care about improving today?”

The answer to that question, pursued with agency, creates meaning in real-time.

Time will disappear. That’s how you know it’s working.