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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When you are 10, a year is 10% of your life. When you are 40, a year is 2.5% of your life. And the same shit happens every day.
I assume it’s based on percentages. When you’re 10 1 year is 10% of your total life. When you’re 50, it is only 2%. That one year seems much less significant compared with the rest.
The brain also works in shortcuts. Imagine the first time you saw a snake and thought “what is this?” and then it bites you. Lesson learned. The next time you come across one you don’t think “what is this?” again… your brain will automatically react and hop you out of the way before you even realize it was a snake. It saves you time (and potentially life). It does this constantly with all experiences making time seem to pass quickly by not stopping to analyze everything all the time.
I’ve always rationalised it as; when you’re 10, 5 years is half of your life, when you’re 50, 5 years is a tenth of your life.
The older you get, time seems more insignificant as you’ve experienced it more.
When you’re 3 years old, a year is a third of your life. When you’re 30 years old, a year is a much less significant portion of your life.
In relation to your entire life, every minute, hour, day, week, and year are each subsequently a smaller portion of your total life. They are the same length of time, but the longer you live, the less of the whole that length of time is in the grand scheme.
Anectdotally I think it’s because after 18 we have less milestones per year. In school you have start of school, end of school, dances, start of football, graduations, etc….Then all of a sudden it ends…and life is just the same thing every day, blending together.
When you are a kid, say 10 years old, the totality that you have experienced are those 10 years. Every year you have lived was 10% of your total life span.
When you are 40, every year you spend is now 2.5% of your total life span so it seems like every year goes by quicker because each year is a smaller percentage of your life
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