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Why time “speeds up” as we get older (2019)

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Re: Why time “speeds up” as we get older (2019)

#101

Post by com2kid »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #57
djmips wrote: post #6

Another hunch that I have is that as you get older you tend to have less unique experiences. I believe our brains compress the information and an entire day that was much like the previous day can just feel like it sped by quickly. Alternatively, if you go on vacation or change your routine then time will slow down as you process a lot of new information.

That's my theory too. In your first 20-30 years there are so many new things to keep your mind busy. Different schools, driver's license, first car, first time seeing a movie, first time seeing a concert, first relationships, first break up, moving out, travel, first job, children and so on. At some point it all becomes a repeat. I feel a lot of movies are just a repeat of what I have seen 30 years ago. Same for musi…

Learn something completely unfamiliar to you. Something you are going to start off terrible at.

Even better, an activity where the community surrounding it is also vastly different than your typical friends circle. Know a bunch of engineers? Dive into painting or sculpting.

Find a way to twist your brain in a painful new direction.

Re: Why time “speeds up” as we get older (2019)

#102

Post by joe__f »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #87

I have an alternative (although unproven) theory. I have been practicing meditation for 15 years, sometimes in batch of 100 hours. The more I practice, the more the time slows down. Not just while meditating, but after the fact as well. Although it fluctuates and I'm not back to my kid self, it feels that I have tremendously more time now than a few years ago. I suspect that it's tied to how much present you manage t…

I've been pracitising meditation for nearly 10 years, and I also experience this effect.

I think the more you meditate, the more you unlearn precious patterns, memories, etc. that were clogging up your brain. Then you have more time to experience the present moment, and your brain has more capacity to process what's going on now rather than what happened to you previously.

Re: Why time “speeds up” as we get older (2019)

#103

Post by joe__f »

joe__f wrote: post #102
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #87

I have an alternative (although unproven) theory. I have been practicing meditation for 15 years, sometimes in batch of 100 hours. The more I practice, the more the time slows down. Not just while meditating, but after the fact as well. Although it fluctuates and I'm not back to my kid self, it feels that I have tremendously more time now than a few years ago. I suspect that it's tied to how much present you manage t…

I've been pracitising meditation for nearly 10 years, and I also experience this effect. I think the more you meditate, the more you unlearn precious patterns, memories, etc. that were clogging up your brain. Then you have more time to experience the present moment, and your brain has more capacity to process what's going on now rather than what happened to you previously.

I meant 'previous' not 'precious'. How can I edit a post I made? I've seen what I think was other people editing their posts

Re: Why time “speeds up” as we get older (2019)

#104

Post by tylerscott »

djmips wrote: post #6

Another hunch that I have is that as you get older you tend to have less unique experiences. I believe our brains compress the information and an entire day that was much like the previous day can just feel like it sped by quickly. Alternatively, if you go on vacation or change your routine then time will slow down as you process a lot of new information.

That makes a ton of sense. The process of dissimulation that we go through as children just to be able to map language to our environment sounds like this. Once an experience is categorized we likely don't have the CPU spin up on the next similar experience. Business as usual. No need to make a note in memory about it.

Re: Why time “speeds up” as we get older (2019)

#105

Post by gowld »

guerrilla wrote: post #31
emreb wrote: post #3

There is a simpler layman's explanation for this one. As you get older every second of your life starts being a smaller percentage of your overall experience. When you a 2 years old, 1 hour is 1/17520 of your life. When you are 50 years old, 1 hour is 1/438000 of your life.

This doesn't provide an actual mechanism though. You'd need evidence that our perception of time is dependent on that ratio and then show us a mechanism for it. On the other hand, the article gives a possible mechanism for a different theory.

The proposed mechanism is that all recalled long-term memories (older than this week) are weighted independently of recency, so as you get older more of your memories are from the past years than the latest year, so the latest year seems less substantial.

Re: Why time “speeds up” as we get older (2019)

#106

Post by guerrilla »

gowld wrote: post #105
guerrilla wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't provide an actual mechanism though. You'd need evidence that our perception of time is dependent on that ratio and then show us a mechanism for it. On the other hand, the article gives a possible mechanism for a different theory.

The proposed mechanism is that all recalled long-term memories (older than this week) are weighted independently of recency, so as you get older more of your memories are from the past years than the latest year, so the latest year seems less substantial.

This is just more elaboration of the hypothesis. It doesn't actually explain anything neurologically. What's the implementation? How do you plan to test for it?

Re: Why time “speeds up” as we get older (2019)

#107

Post by carlmr »

djmips wrote: post #6

Another hunch that I have is that as you get older you tend to have less unique experiences. I believe our brains compress the information and an entire day that was much like the previous day can just feel like it sped by quickly. Alternatively, if you go on vacation or change your routine then time will slow down as you process a lot of new information.

I think this is true as well, it's easier to remember special days, than average days.

Another issue is that kids are exposed to more varied experience at school. Jobs often expose us to similar experiences over and over again.

The only problem is how to get paid to have a varied life.

Re: Why time “speeds up” as we get older (2019)

#108

Post by pugworthy »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #79
gmfawcett wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a much more compelling argument than the article's.

This is my impression as well. Old people who have settled in a routine can tell what year and month it is, but probably have a harder time telling the day or weekday. For them, all days are weekends. You don't even need to be old to feel this. I've had vacations where I mostly played JRPGs, and those vacations certainly felt considerably shorter.

You might correct that to "people who don't work" instead of "old people".

Re: Why time “speeds up” as we get older (2019)

#109

Post by WA9ACE »

djmips wrote: post #6

Another hunch that I have is that as you get older you tend to have less unique experiences. I believe our brains compress the information and an entire day that was much like the previous day can just feel like it sped by quickly. Alternatively, if you go on vacation or change your routine then time will slow down as you process a lot of new information.

It's all anecdotal, but having been full time RVing for several months now after selling our house time has slowed to a crawl. Before we sold our house the days flew past at 100mph. It's amazing how little control we can exert on our own perception of the flow of time.

Re: Why time “speeds up” as we get older (2019)

#110

Post by pbrb »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #87

I have an alternative (although unproven) theory. I have been practicing meditation for 15 years, sometimes in batch of 100 hours. The more I practice, the more the time slows down. Not just while meditating, but after the fact as well. Although it fluctuates and I'm not back to my kid self, it feels that I have tremendously more time now than a few years ago. I suspect that it's tied to how much present you manage t…

Where would you start right now if you were starting to meditate with no prior experience, knowing what you know now with 15yrs of experience?

I'm going to take what you recommend and run with it.

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