Marcel Proust wrote a profound series of books that investigates memory, personal change, and the subjective feeling of time called, "In Search of Lost Time." He had an exceptional memory and recalls his own perceptive and idiosyncratic feelings starting from early childhood. Some of his observations are universal though, and you'll be delighted when he helps you remember them for yourself.
Why time appears to speed up with age
51–60 of 107 posts
Re: Why time appears to speed up with age
#52As someone who's in his fifties, I can say that while this is an entertaining concept, it doesn't really map correctly. At least not for me. The passing of time has always seemed to me to be more of a function of memory. When I was younger, my memory was _much_ better. And much more vivid. It was in HD. I noticed by the time I was in high school that not only was my memory worse, but that it was of much lower quality…
I wonder if the memory effect is related to emotional state - strong emotions result in stronger memory formation (I think I read this as a research finding as well). Strong emotions, in turn, are caused by new, challenging, and meaningful experiences. As we get older, our emotions tend to level out as we sort of "find ourselves" and settle into a routine. Break the routine, and memory formation snaps back to what it…
In your first point, you're thinking of what Psychologists refer to as "Flashbulb Memories" [1]. In general, research has found that people despite being very vivid memories with a very strong confidence from the memory-owner, there is no evidence that they are more accurate than any other memory.
However, with regards to the discussion, it is clear that the perception of stronger memory formation is definitely linked to emotion or emotional arousal. And really an individual's perception is an adequate flag for me. I might reframe the passing of time being tied to a root cause of emotion/emotional arousal.
Re: Why time appears to speed up with age
#53As someone who's in his fifties, I can say that while this is an entertaining concept, it doesn't really map correctly. At least not for me. The passing of time has always seemed to me to be more of a function of memory. When I was younger, my memory was _much_ better. And much more vivid. It was in HD. I noticed by the time I was in high school that not only was my memory worse, but that it was of much lower quality…
I wonder if the memory effect is related to emotional state - strong emotions result in stronger memory formation (I think I read this as a research finding as well). Strong emotions, in turn, are caused by new, challenging, and meaningful experiences. As we get older, our emotions tend to level out as we sort of "find ourselves" and settle into a routine. Break the routine, and memory formation snaps back to what it…
"I wonder if the memory effect is related to emotional state - strong emotions result in stronger memory formation"
Emotion is definitely highly linked to memory. E.g. you may be familiar with state-dependent memory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_learning
This is where certain memories are best recalled (or can only be recalled) when one is in the same emotional state as when the memories were created. And I don't think there's any question that events that occur when emotions are stored the most strongly; that's basically half of what emotions are for.
It's difficult to say exactly how the density of memory is linked with perception of time. I would posit though that experiencing a variety of strong emotions on a regular basis is important for maintaining both good mental health and a well-functioning brain.
Re: Why time appears to speed up with age
#54Brian Skinner, physicist and basketball analytics extraordinaire, wrote a really nice blog post about this 3.5 years ago [1]. Mining the comments from that post shows it's been banged around numerous times before that [2][3].
[1] https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/parenting-...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/science/21qna.html?_r=1
[3] http://web.archive.org/web/20071116094344/http://ourworld.co...
Re: Why time appears to speed up with age
#55What is this SEO spam garbage? Every single link including the reference goes to junk pages and the article itself is cut & pasted all over the internet.
https://www.google.com/search?q=T.+L.+Freeman+discusses+the+...
Re: Why time appears to speed up with age
#56Because you get slower.
Re: Why time appears to speed up with age
#57My grandfather, who died last year at 93, used to say that when you were 2 going on 3, that was 33% of your life. At 49 going on 50, though, that's 2% of your life. 33% goes a lot farther than 2%.
Re: Why time appears to speed up with age
#58About 15 years ago (that long already? ;)) I saw a documentary state that scientists had done studies showing that time perception could be manipulated by changing their temperature.
The warmer it was, the more slowly time seemed to pass. The colder it was, the faster it seemed to pass.
They hypothesized that since people's core body temperature dropped as they age, that it could be a factor in why time seemed to pass faster as we age.
For some reason I've always favored this solution.
Re: Why time appears to speed up with age
#59Don't worry. Its probably going to get get excruciatingly long at the end.
Seriously, its the thinking too much about the past and the future that lead to this perception.
You probably just thought about it a lot less when you were young.
Re: Why time appears to speed up with age
#60Here is my take on the question...
1. Kids are bored too often so time seems to take forever.
2. Career life and building a family is so busy that time flies by.
3. Retirement and empty nesting seems to go by fast because you think more about your pending demise and also have nothing to show for your life day after day (career goals ETC.)