I hear a lot of people making that remark, that the years go by quicker as you get older.
For me, at least, it seems like that’s only the case if nothing much changes in my life in that year.
To me, years seem to feel like they go slower if there’s lots of new/different things happening.
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I’s because as you get older you do less, so you have less memories to fill the same time frame.
Think of driving down 2 roads of the same length. One has 2 speed bumps. The other has 100 speed bumps. The one with fewer speed bumps is smooth sailing and you barely remember the drive. I think of young life and older life like these 2 roads. Young life has tons of milestones, ups and downs, memorable events, and you really feel the heavy emotional rollercoaster. Then you get to 50 or so and each week is just about the same. Fewer ups and downs. And those weeks are just not memorable.
People do not know the answer to this question. There are many hypotheses, but some of these people here are really making a stretch.
I think it has to do with time ratios. When you are ten a year is 10% of your life. When you are 50 a year is 2% if my math ain’t wrong. The older you get, the smaller the ratio. That’s why summers seem so long as a little kid.
When you 4 years old, one year is 1/4 of your life. When you’re 24, one year is 1/6 of your life. When you’re 40 one year is 1/10th of you’re life. Years get subjectively smaller the older you get.
I always figured it was how much more you squeeze into your day as you get older. Also, the stuff you cram in is monotonous.
I figured after retirement your time flies because of age and requirement to rest more.
Your personal concept of time is permanently expanding.
When you’re age 10, one year was 1/10th of your life. Time seemed to take longer because of that.
I’m now age 30, so one year is 1/30th of my life, so in comparison to age 10 the weeks/months/years seem to get faster and faster
When you are 2 and a year goes by to your 3rd birthday, that’s feels like you’ve lived 50% of your life. When you’re 40 and turn 41, you’ve experienced only 1/40th of your life pass. So 2-3 feels like a year, 40-41 feels like a week(ish).
A year as a percentage of how long you’ve been alive gets smaller the longer you live. At 1 years old, it’ll take 100% of your then lifetime to get to 2 years old. At 99 years old, it’ll take approximately 1% of your then lifetime to get to 100 years old. Therefore, your perception of how long a year is relative to your overall then lifetime gets shorter the older you get.
Vsauce made a great video on this topic: https://youtu.be/zHL9GP_B30E
About the “1 year at 10 is a tenth of your life and 1 year at 80 is an eightieth” concept, he quotes a study that shows that the perception of the length of each year start to plateau after 50 years old based on a survey.
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