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Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?

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Re: Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?

#21

Post by dasil003 »

roc wrote: post #11
city41 wrote: post #10

There is a relatively new form of psychology called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). It basically marries eastern philosophy and meditation with western science. One thing it does try to do is combat this sensation by living in the moment. In one of my ACT books (written by the founder of the movement), he advocates that as you drive to work you should practice staying in that moment, take it all in, don't le…

Sounds interesting. But I'm really not interested in having my commute feel any longer than absolutely necessary.

When you are always not interested you will be enlightened.

Re: Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?

#23

Post by alttab »

mbrubeck wrote: post #9
alttab wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its a mix of both, but mostly yours. When you are 4, turning 5 is another 20-25% of your life. When you're 39, turning 40 is more like .025% of your life. Perception of time changes because we have more of it to compare it to, making it feel like its accelerating. But that is all relative.

You mean 2.5%... or maybe your perception really has accelerated. :)

Thats what you get when you divide 1/40 in the calculator and forget to move the decimal over.

Re: Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?

#24

Post by maurycy »

vaksel wrote: post #13

because you don't have the same amount of free time as before. When you are a kid, all you have is a little bit of school. And then most of the day is free to do whatever you want. When you are an adult, you work from 8 to 6(counting commuting). You come back from work, you don't relax, you go cook yourself dinner. Then you eat your dinner. And have 3 hours of relaxation before you go to sleep and repeat the process.…

The same seems to happen with learning languages, and generally, learning.

It's much harder to learn something drastically new as an adult, as you don't have free time, you perceive a year as a short milestone etc.

Re: Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?

#26

Post by abecedarius »

I've wondered if Feynman's counting rate -- http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf -- varied with age.

(tl;dr While a grad student he got interested in this question of subjective time rates and started counting in his head while doing different things. The story doesn't say if he ever tried it again decades later. Unfortunately I don't remember timing myself the first time I read it -- enough time's gone by that I could have looked for a change now.)

Re: Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?

#27

Post by jamesbritt »

btilly wrote: post #18

Many years ago an older friend of mine made a comment whose full truth has become clearer to me as I've grown older. The older you are the faster time goes. The telescoping effect can be quite startling.

I think when I reached 30 it occurred to me that, not only is life short, it's shorter than you think.

Re: Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?

#28

Post by zupatol »

Some novelties are newer than others. Those you remember best are those that don't fit with your generalizations about the world. As you grow older your generalizations get better and less things surprise you. The more you've seen, the more generalizations you need, because you don't have time to review the whole of your experience everytime you take a decision. The generalizations become a gut feeling, you know how to react but you forget why. The gut feeling makes you more efficient but by unconsciously generalizing from what you perceive you lose sight of the details. If this explanation is correct, there must be ways to reverse the process, at least for some events. Try meditation maybe, or drugs? I haven't. Tell me if it works.

On the other hand it might just be your memory getting worse at recording new things, because your brain gets old and no longer works so well.

Or maybe your brain is becoming more careful about what it records because there's not as much free space as there used to be.

Or maybe your brain is just bored, at first it really loved this shiny new recording thing and played with it the whole day, but then got used to it. Nowadays it only gets it out for the really big occasions.

Anyway, this is really about the pace at which you record informations, and about the amount of informations you discard. I'm sure these questions also arise in algorithms or machine learning. Certainly some knowledgable scientist on this forum is going to point out a parallel with some machine learning algorithm or information processing theorem?

Re: Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?

#29

Post by jodrellblank »

I think there's a component where the older I get, the easier it is to lose time and suddenly realise hours have passed.

Both because I know more / recognise more things so I have more mental world to wander around in, and also because I work on longer tasks, can concentrate for longer and take more interest in details so am not tripped up and awoken as easily.

Re: Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?

#30

Post by xtho »

alttab wrote: post #6
mhb wrote: post #2

Maybe this is naive, but the younger you are, the larger the ratio of each unit of time to your total time lived. So each unit of time seems longer.

I think its a mix of both, but mostly yours. When you are 4, turning 5 is another 20-25% of your life. When you're 39, turning 40 is more like .025% of your life. Perception of time changes because we have more of it to compare it to, making it feel like its accelerating. But that is all relative.

You seem to forget: The older you get, the more you forget. With ten, you know pretty well what you did last summer. With 80 you'd say: What summer? It's snowing outside.
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