Why does time seem to go faster as we get older?
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Because each passing day, week, month, year is a smaller and smaller piece of your overall accumulated lifetime of memories.
When you’re 10, another year is adding a 10 percent chunk to your memories. When you’re 100, every year is just a 1 percent chunk, so in comparison to the rest it doesn’t seem like very much, so it feels like it just flew by.
Because we move slower then?
This is how I think about it: One year becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of your whole life. When you’re 4 years old, one year is 25% of your life. When you’re 40, one year is only 2.5%. It just keeps shrinking. Depressed yet? 🙂
Your brain will sort your input into “new” and “known”.
When you see/experience something you have seen/experienced before, your brain automatically sort it away for you. (If it didn’t, you would be like a toddler, completely transfixed by everything you see, touch, taste. Not able to function, just experiencing.)
As we get older a lot more is already known to us, and therefore sorted away, making us feel like time moves faster.
That’s why shrooms are cool, they remove the “sorting-filter” in your brain.
When you’re 4 years old, living for 1 more year is adding 25% to your entire life.
When you’re 50 years old, living for 1 more year is adding 2% to your entire life.
It’s nothing more than relativity. Time seems to ‘go faster’ as you get older because 1 year becomes less and less of your total lived experience. 1 year seems like a long time when your 5 because you’ve only been around for a couple years.
This is how I think about it: One year becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of your whole life. When you’re 4 years old, one year is 25% of your life. When you’re 40, one year is only 2.5%. It just keeps shrinking. Depressed yet? 🙂
The ‘new experiences’ theory doesn’t mesh with my experience. Time moved very slowly for me until I was 27 and had my first child. Then time FLEW! I feel that the sensation is related to how much free time I have. If I am very busy, time feels like it moves faster.
I feel it’s because you’re thinking about it more. When I was much younger it felt I had all the time in the world. Now in my 30’s, thoughts of getting old and not having unlimited time to do anything makes me much more cognizant of how much time is going by.
Because we move slower then?
Relativity. Each passing day is shorter in relation to the total time passed in previous days.
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