Live data from Hacker News

Why time seems to pass faster as we age

invertedpassion.com

261–270 of 272 posts

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they just wonder when the uneasiness that throws him constantly around the world subsides and he'll settle down comfortably in his own skin and mind and start living instead of constantly trying to escape from life into the world.

What life is that exactly? What is it that you suppose I am escaping from?

Life of comfort? Of not feeling the need? Life of being able to just sit on your butt and be happy?

I'm not quite sure.

As from what you might be escaping from... Admission that your experiences are irrelevant? That you have no obligation to yourself or anybody to live a specific way? That no way of living is better or worse (given that you have money and ability to decide about yourself). All means of distracting yourself until you die are equally valid.

Meaning of life is a weird thing. It changes as you age and experience. It's different for everybody despite the trends. I'm not gonna argue any point about it.

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that makes life feel soooo long and so rich. This doesn't sound right at all. For me, and I suspect for most people, it has the opposite effect. It makes life feel short, fleeting and mundane. Looking back to 2014, I can't believe how quickly the past 10 years has gone. Heck just looking back 4 years, the pandemic years seems to have flown by. It's like a distant…

> Life is precious because it is short and fleeting. Here's another viewpoint. Life is not precious at all because it is short and fleeting. Muslim here. We believe only the parts of this life which pertain to afterlife are precious, as afterlife is eternal instead of temporary. This life is merely an end to a means. It doesn't need to be a goal in and of itself because there's another life after it.

Of course , when a religion creates a Houri why would actual life be precious?

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#264
post #118

One thing I love about the speedup of time is that picking a compounding habit (say, doing something for 10 minutes each day) feels like having an almost instant pay-off. "Oh wow 3 years already passed" -> "Oh wow I got pretty good at this thing I picked up just yesterday" I picked up biking during the pandemic, and 3 years later I have legs of steel, 10k miles under my belt, and people know me as "the bike guy", whe…

It kinda sucks that you learn much slower when you’re older though. I’ve been practicing piano an hour or two a day for 7 months and I don’t really feel like I’ve improved at all. I was intermediate when I started and I am taking professional lessons. Mid 30s here.

[dead]

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#265
post #6

There 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…

[dead]

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kinda sucks that you learn much slower when you’re older though. I’ve been practicing piano an hour or two a day for 7 months and I don’t really feel like I’ve improved at all. I was intermediate when I started and I am taking professional lessons. Mid 30s here.

Maybe you just plateaued? I’ve noticed practicing something over and over does not make you better. It just makes you faster at doing something you already know how to do. Trying a new approach when you practice is what I find actually makes you better.

I am improving it's just really, really slow. My teacher is working on my weaknesses as well. It just seems like I have to increase my effort 3 fold to have a chance at reaching advanced any time in the near future.

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear that; I hope you're all doing well now! I suppose I had too much time to dwell, not enough external pressure to keep my shit together. I have kids now too, but the end result is that I rarely journal anymore - there's always something else I need or want to do, and then suddenly I'm dead tired; rinse, repeat.

Adderall reshuffled the deck for me and I started being dealt better hands. Most importantly, I could finally turn realizations into persistent changes. The changes still took years but having effort pay off was a new thing.

Great to see it helped. I'm having mixed success with Ritalin - it initially fixed some major problems arguably permanently, and restored some of my lacking self-confidence, but now it's a mixed blessing - it feeds bad habits just as well as it feeds good ones. An indiscriminate booster, that is.

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#268

You all should checkout https://www.maximiliankiener.com/digitalprojects/time It explains and illustrates why time flies so well, love that site.

yes awesome site! I remember this from when it was first published, very clearly explains why the passage of time changes during your lifetime, and also explains why some people search for new thrills around their midlife to try and get those extended experiences again, always trying something new, because just doing the things you were doing before is now perceived as boring.

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#269
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and one thing you can do is doing something/everything different everyday, but the downside of this is that you'll get fatigue out of keeping your brain on alert all the time. I observed this with people traveling, I used to call travel cognitive impairment, as usually functional human beings (like my close relatives) suddenly get very lost and helpless during travel (specially at airports). I then realized that…

I am travelling right now, freeform exploration of another country is full of novelty. It feels like I have been here for a month but it has only been two weeks. The downside is I am exhausted. I also couldn't imagine doing any of my work while travelling even if I had a computer with me. There is downtime enough to do some, but I don't think I'd have the capacity to engage with it. I think advanced abstract thinking…

I have friends who say that if they had the money they would travel the whole world all the time.

I always tell them that this soon will feel more tiring than working and they will choose to stay in the same place for at least 3 months.

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#270
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve already been called out but I feel like confessing that I thought the “no kids” decision was selfish until I had kids. For various reasons I won’t bore people with, I now go out of my way to tell young people that they should feel absolutely no obligation to do have kids. Yes, as animals it’s our collective responsibility to bring up the next generation of our species, but that doesn’t mean every individual sh…

Sorry to hear that. My mom and two of my sisters and my brother in law all work in childhood disability social work. When I was young I went on a lot of home visits or visited my mom’s workplace. The bundle of joy narrative broke down for me at a pretty early age as I witnessed a lot of heartbreak and impossible struggles. Funny how those stories never seem to show up on social media or only the ones with happy endin…

Yup. I felt like some kind of massive failure or something for the first 4 years because I didn’t even know what was wrong and I basically didn’t know any other parents had struggles this bad. Now I still feel terrible because everything sucks, but I know it’s not all my fault or normal.
Post reply on HN