Watching my children, they appear to have more time. I expect it is not so much that time seems to pass faster, but that as you age you move into loftier goals that take longer.
Why time seems to pass faster as we age
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Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#32Pain extends time. Pleasure decreases it. Do things that are painful. Find pleasure in the painful like discipline and stuff that is uncomfortable.
That sounds like Dunbar in Catch-22:
"Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times-seventeen years."
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#331. Time is, literally, relative. We have nothing to compare things to when we are young, so everything takes for-ev-eeeeer.
2. The brain optimizes for storage. Our day to day is very consistent; we have routines. Those routines blur because why remember details if the details are very similar.
Combine the two and as you age, things just feel like they fly by.
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#34I've always rationalised it as: When you're one years old, 1 year is your whole life. When you're 100 years old, 1 year is 1/100th of your life.
So, if I suddenly have amnesia and don't remember the past 99 years, will my time slow down? It is just a thought experiment...
If you don't remember the past, slow down relative to what?
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#35I've been journalling for 10+ years. In addition to forcing me to actually write down what happened that day, reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that makes life feel soooo long and so rich. I can review my now-wife's rocky courtship and feel grateful we made it. I looked back 3 years ago and found the day our children were conceived :D (we have twins). I can review the anxieties of my PhD years, etc…
that's really cool. I use to always have a small notebook with my at work to jot down notes and sketches. I had boxes and boxes of those notebooks saved over the years and would flip through old ones from time to time to see what i was up to back then. In a move I was very tired of carrying boxes so threw them all out instead of loading them up and transferring them to the next attic.. i really _really_ wish i hadn't.
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#36I think this blog post of mine from 2007 gives a better (or at least more succinct) answer to this question: https://thelocalyarn.com/article/this-is-your-life
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#37There is already a body of research on the perception of time as a function of age, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Changes_with_a... . It stems from a few things, and novelty is only one factor. (Also, it is not only that the world begins (to us) as full of novelty, but also most people gradually transition from exploration to exploitation.) In addition to remembering previous events, there is also…
My anecdata is that my late-twenties felt way slower than my early-twenties, mostly because I switched from a 9-5 office job to a remote job that allowed me to slow travel. I spent a month in Rome and I remember most days and definitely remember all weekends, but I would have to really dig deep for a memory from 2019.
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#38I've been journalling for 10+ years. In addition to forcing me to actually write down what happened that day, reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that makes life feel soooo long and so rich. I can review my now-wife's rocky courtship and feel grateful we made it. I looked back 3 years ago and found the day our children were conceived :D (we have twins). I can review the anxieties of my PhD years, etc…
Great idea. i should try journaling more to make life feel longerr and richer too. Thanks
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#39I've been journalling for 10+ years. In addition to forcing me to actually write down what happened that day, reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that makes life feel soooo long and so rich. I can review my now-wife's rocky courtship and feel grateful we made it. I looked back 3 years ago and found the day our children were conceived :D (we have twins). I can review the anxieties of my PhD years, etc…
It's great to hear journaling helps you reflect on actual passed time. For me, I never get around to revisiting old entries regularly. How do you motivate yourself to do so?
I just lower the barrier enough that it's trivial. I'm at my terminal all day, and one bash command spits out X years ago +/- 3 days.
Right now, I'm really curious to see why I took a trip 10 years ago to my hometown - all I see in my journal is my packing list, so someday the journal entry for that trip will pop up.
That helps too.
Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age
#40The explanation is probably simple in the end: children are mentally more present and mindful, and thus bored, and as adults we become increasingly distracted by higher order thoughts and projections and plans so we're considerably less mindful of the present.