Why does time seem to go faster as we get older?
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I’ll be interested to know if there is an actual answer – I always think because our brain is analysing time relative to how long we have been alive – for example, the 12 months between your 11th and 12th birthday is essentially 1/12th of you life whereas the 12 months between your 23rd and 24th birthday is 1/24th of your life. So in comparison to when you are younger, each year seems quicker because it is a smaller percentage of the life you have lived
I only noticed time flying by after i retired. I have theory that it’s because now I only do whatever I feel like doing. No structure any more and there’s a causal link between how fast you perceive time to pass by and how much you’re enjoying yourself
I only noticed time flying by after i retired. I have theory that it’s because now I only do whatever I feel like doing. No structure any more and there’s a causal link between how fast you perceive time to pass by and how much you’re enjoying yourself
It’s because we stop having new experiences. When we are children, every day is filled with something new, and something to learn, which makes it seem like time is going slowly.
As adults, you can go entire weeks just doing what you have done before for the last 10 weeks, which makes time appear really fast.
There have been a couple studies on this and it’s believed that it’s because when we are young, the path our neurons have to take to write a new memory is shorter than the path it takes when there are more memories as we are older.
This means we write memories “faster” when we are young and a greater part of the memory section of our brain is full of experiences from when we were young.
So as you mentally scan the years (think like a movie) the scenes when we were young take longer to “play” because there are more of them. Then as we age, it gets shorter and shorter of a “scene” per year.
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2019/no-not-just-time-speeds-get-older/
For me perceived speed of time is relative to how much is going on in the moment… so I attribute it to the amount of responsibility/have-to-do’s at that phase of life.
Bored in school? A minute feels like forever.
Frantically trying to finish a report for the boss while the plumber arrives to fix the leaking pipe and two kids are having a duel in the living room while your spouse is asking about the $ available for car repairs that month? Minutes fly by.
For me perceived speed of time is relative to how much is going on in the moment… so I attribute it to the amount of responsibility/have-to-do’s at that phase of life.
Bored in school? A minute feels like forever.
Frantically trying to finish a report for the boss while the plumber arrives to fix the leaking pipe and two kids are having a duel in the living room while your spouse is asking about the $ available for car repairs that month? Minutes fly by.
A lot of replies have said already it is because of new memories. However, this knowledge can be used: Deliberately make new memories, and break with your habits and routines regularly. E.g if you walk to work, you can chose a new way every now and then. This helps a lot and counters the perception of “flying time” to some extend.
I heard on a science podcast that your brain judges how much time has passed by how many new memories it makes. So a year stuffed with new memories (e.g. a kid’s) feels like forever, but a year with no new memories (e.g. an old person’s) isn’t registered as any time at all, because nothing happened.
They also refuted the popular theory that a year feels longer to a child and shorter to an adult as they vary in proportion to their total life.
I heard on a science podcast that your brain judges how much time has passed by how many new memories it makes. So a year stuffed with new memories (e.g. a kid’s) feels like forever, but a year with no new memories (e.g. an old person’s) isn’t registered as any time at all, because nothing happened.
They also refuted the popular theory that a year feels longer to a child and shorter to an adult as they vary in proportion to their total life.
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