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Is time literally moving faster or is it an age thing?

Mihos

Gold Member
I figure it's a sample rate thing. When your young, your senses update you brain more times per second so your perception of time is different.
This is also the case during duress, like when you are falling or in a crash, your mind temporarily takes more measurements per second, giving the sensation of moving in slow motion.
 
It’s the tight schedule, 100%.

I used to have the same “fast” time perception a decade ago. Now time seems to move slower than ever. I had a case at work where someone called me about on offer and I swear it felt like I made it a month ago - but actually it wasn’t even a week ago. lol

The more you plan up your days, the faster you perceive time. I am lucky to have very little obligations and plans, so I can live one day at a time basically. Gives me a completely different feel for time itself.
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
Pink Floyd have a great song about this.


Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
 

DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
It's really just dependant on you and how YOU value time. Time ITSELF is moving at its normal speed (whatever that is) but how we PERCEIVE time is an individual thing. When you're slogging away at something you hate, time will seem to move slower... You dread the next minute ... But when you're feeling great and having fun, time seems to move faster. That's because you're living in the moment.
 

Aesius

Member
Totally related to your busy routine

Last time I had a year that I remember most of? 2020 with the COVID quarantine.

Unemployed, single, spending most of my time at my parents home learning new stuff and hobbies.

It's been 5 years since then and feels like it was yesterday. 5 years that flew by.
I see this sentiment so often and it's so damn true. I think it's just because COVID, particularly the spring of 2020, was such a monumental event in virtually everyone's life, that it serves as a hugely prominent milestone that we will forever look back on as a marker of the passage of time.

Knowing that it has been 5 years since "2 weeks to flatten the curve" is almost chilling to me. That's early 30s to late 30s for me. I had no kids then, now I have two. There's also a somewhat melancholic feeling that comes along with wondering what I could have done during those five years. Especially with so many people using lockdown time to better themselves. When viewed in hindsight, five years feels like enough time to do almost anything.

"Every man lives two lives, and the second begins when he realizes he only has one" is hitting me hard these days. The question of "if not now, then when?" is on my mind daily when it comes to things I want to do but am putting off for some reason. It's like I truly didn't grasp the finite nature of life until recently.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Assuming two people do the exact same things spending time eating, sleeping, doing activities etc.... I think the person whose more interested in his daily work or hobbies will say time goes faster. The person bored and hates it will think it takes forever.

I've never been a book reader. I buy them occasionally, read the first 50 pages, bored to death and seems like forever. When in reality it was maybe an hour lying on the couch. But then I can be surfing the net reading articles or doing GAF. Same one hour of time and time goes fast.

I dont even think it necessarily has to do with loving what it is, but simply involvement. A couple times a year I got to shovel my driveway after a big snow fall. I dont like doing it. But when it's done and I go inside and check the clock... holy shit that took a long time.
 
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niilokin

Member
I had a short relationship last summer and the amount of memories generated from that period still feels like it lasted for a lot longer. While I was single for 7 years - days, weeks and even months just melted together...




This is actually a weird thing, at that particular time when you're 100% into something time feels like passes by quick but afterwards you feel like it added much meaningful content to your life, that there's a long stretch of stuff happening and making life feel longer (in a good way). And days that feel that just drag on and on is the opposite, you don't really remember any of it.

:pie_thinking: :pie_thinking:
Assuming two people do the exact same things spending time eating, sleeping, doing activities etc.... I think the person whose more interested in his daily work or hobbies will say time goes faster. The person bored and hates it will think it takes forever.
 
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Ikutachi

Member
When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes; when you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours. That's relativity.
-Albert Einstein
 

8bitpill

Member
As most others have said, it's an age thing.

Born in 1983, as I get older and watch my daughter grow up, it just seems to be happening so fast, from the time I have in a day to how much work I can get done in a eight to ten hour timeline.

I have my daughters perspective at times where she thinks a week is a months time and a month seems like half a year to her. It reminds me that I had the same perspective when I was her age,

I remember sitting in school just constantly looking at the clock and it feeling like the day wouldn't end. Now I start work and five hours later felt like two hours.

Just had a funeral for my fathers passing last month, everything happen so quickly, I've barely had time to take it all in, along with the fact two days from now it will be a month since I buried him.

Time to eat some psychedelics and put this on repeat,
 
Kids also have busy schedules.

I'm out of the rat race (have been for 10 years already), and I can tell time moves so much faster. Psychologically, each day feels like a fight against aging.
 

YCoCg

Member
The Office Thank You GIF


I swear as a kid I enjoyed keeping count of seconds and they went literally slower.
I don't have an explanation to this, but it is definitely my experience
Elephant
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
It's an age thing. There are two main reasons:

When you were a kid many experiences were completely new to you, so a lot of days felt quite different and memorable. As an adult most days are the same as most other days, and kinda just blend together.

Also, as a kid a year was a large part of your entire life thus far, so it felt like a more significant span of time. As an adult, a year is a much smaller part of your entire life so far, so it feels like they go past faster. Five years when you're ten years old is half your life, five years when you're 40 is "man, that feels like it was last year".
 
It’s an age thing. Your perception of time continues to go faster and faster as you grow older. It’s a combination of your brain not being able to remember things as well, your standard day-to-day being repetitive, and how the longer you live, the lower the percentage of time is relative to your life.

When you were 10, 5 years was 50% of your entire life. When you’re 50, it’s only 10%.

RE7RiMa.gif
I would add, our brain being slower as we age. So, comparatively, everything else seems to go by faster
 

MaestroMike

Gold Member
its a seasonal/temprature thing. its winter and colder less blood flow to ur brain and more goes to your core your body wants to conserve energy and hibernate more during winter it wants to turn off just turn up the heat and put on layers/jacket and start sweating if u want more blood flow and oxygen going up there. the more you move/exercise is going to divert more blood flow to those areas too so less is available to the brain and time flies by without you noticing
 
My theory is simply it's the internet and smartphones, makes time fly, we've all basically put our lives on fast forward as the price to pay for never being bored again.

I remember as teen before I had internet access how miserably bored I would get, oftentimes if I didn't have a new game to play or something to watch on TV I was up shit creek, 2004 was a surreally long year that just dragged and dragged and dragged, felt like a decade in just one year.

But part of it is age, I do remember the first time going "already?" in spring of 2006 looking back on a year prior in 2005, I only had had the internet for a few months by that point so it wasn't all that.

Our perception is also funny and sometimes doesn't make sense, I think back to early 2024 and I go "fuck, how was that a year ago already?" bummer of 2024 feels like a long time ago.
 

Trilobit

Absolutely Cozy
I swear I was just saying what feels like a week ago that February was almost here, and here we are now approaching March!

Even my kids who are in school are surprised by the speed things are going and I know I definitely didn’t notice it back then. I thought school dragged on forever!
Turn off all devices with displays for a month and you'll be asking the opposite question.
 
I discovered that the more stressful the job, the slower time gets. Like "come on, 10 more minutes before I clocked out, and that task you thought that took forever only lasted 3 min". Well, that's life for me.
 

Melon Husk

Member
I discovered that the more stressful the job, the slower time gets. Like "come on, 10 more minutes before I clocked out, and that task you thought that took forever only lasted 3 min". Well, that's life for me.
Yep, how many people after school spend 8 hours of their day in a small room with 30 other people (and socialize with even more out of class), every weekday, doing something difficult and new?
 
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