Do We Perceive Time as Moving Faster, the Older We Become?
If you have ever spent any time talking to someone older, you most definitely have heard them spout something along the lines of “Life is too short”, followed by a various statement usually convincing you to stop doing something. Personally I used to think that life seems pretty long and a day can seem like a long time, but as I get older, I find myself thinking quite the opposite. Recently people have done studies asking the question of whether or not the older we get, if we perceive time as moving faster.
The theory behind us perceiving time moving faster is mostly because when we were little 5 years seemed like no time, but at 60 years, it is a much smaller fraction of your life. Due to being a small fraction in the grand scheme of your life, we perceive it as going by faster. However the real probability is actually much more interesting. What if I said that rather than time moving faster, the times we actually remember are far more infrequent than when we were younger.
This was the idea that was first proposed in the turn of the 20th century by psychologist William James. His hypothesis was that because the human mind remembers events more clearly the first time we do them and that most of our firsts happen at a young age, our perception of time feels much slower. As we age, we become more routine in the way we do things and many of our firsts are harder to come by. By our old age when firsts rarely happen, life seems to pass by at the speed of light. Especially when we become consumed in our work and do nothing else, life passes us by.
Much of this has to do with actually how we are living our lives on a daily basis. If we are working towards something and have set goals that we want to accomplish, time could seem like it moves at a snails pace. Once we become more engaged with our own lives and don’t just sit around doing nothing, we are perceiving time at a slower pace, but better yet, using time efficiently. We cant ever go back in time, so the next best thing is to take advantage of and savor every last minute we are getting.
No matter what age you are, there is always a way to try something new and go after new experiences. In the grand scheme of life, most people hardly ever remember items they bought or money they spent, experiences are what last a life time. So if you are someone that feels like life is passing by at too fast of a pace, perhaps it is just passing you by. Maybe you need to experience something new or try to find a new hobby that brings joy to your life. If you remember every day as joyful and productive, you will never think that time is passing you by.
Thanks to @Elyaque for the badges
yeah this is very true. I wanna quit life and just steem all day , yeah baby
In my own life, I've noticed that time seems to fly when I have a "real job." When I'm not working a traditional 9-5, time goes much slower and it seems like I get a lot more satisfaction and fulfillment from each day.
A good way to gauge this is to ask yourself, "How far away is Christmas?"
When you're a kid, if your family celebrates Christmas, that's probably one of the highlights of your year. In January, it seems forever away. But even in November, you'd ask your mom every day, "How many days until Christmas?" And she'd say "Only thirty more days", and you'd groan. Thirty? That's so far away!
But as an adult, Christmas never seems that far away. By fall, it feels like Christmas is just around the corner. With twenty days to go, you start to panic about whether you'll have enough time to buy gifts and make preparations.
When I'm not working a "real job", Christmas still seems pretty far away. Even in November.
I wonder about this too, thanks for sharing! Let's live a purposeful life.
Nice perspective and analysis. I actually have been thinking about this for awhile and came to the following conclusion: The perception of time gets faster as you age simply because you are more aware of how long something is.
For example, the more knowledge you have of something, the better you understand it. The same goes for time, if you have experienced it for a longer period than others, you have a better way to measure that time in comparison to what you are doing in the present.
I was very busy with college and starting my career in my 20's, but it seemed to go on forever. Now that I am in my early 40's and working hard as ever with my career, I seem to be seeing time move by faster.
This is something that a young person may never understand until they live it through their 20's and 30's.
For shure, for my humble point of view is that we are very occupied with more stuff, and more thing on our head, family, work, problems, you name it, but the old people and the child’s, consider the time more slow, because, the things over their heads are less, that’s kind of my answer
Of course we perceive that time is moving faster as we grow older -- because it is! Somehow, it just is. It must be. Yes, I'm convinced that it is moving much faster.
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I life is short as they say and we need to enjoy it. experience everything you haven't done before, live a happy life with the one who loves you the most.
The part about fewer new experiences being made and how our routine is build-in especially relating to work made me think of Steve Cutts short movie: In The Fall
I definitely feel time moving faster and thanks for sharing that it could be that I'm not doing enough and specifically trying out new things and activities. I had a friend who describe experiencing time moving faster at an older age as going through a toilet roll, it always feel that it's running out faster when we are coming to the end of the roll ;)
Well i am only 25 and i feel like time just flies.. I hate time wasting and always say there isn't enough time for everything. And I think that time goes a lot faster when you are busy rather than the other way around. When you are always occupied with something at least for me it feels like days and months then years just pass by in a flash. When you are up to nothing usually are bored and even days can drag forever.