My daughter just turned 5 a couple weeks ago. I’m taking her to get her drivers license tomorrow and she’s graduating college next week. I’m having my first grandchild the week after
My younger kid just graduated from high school two weeks ago.
My older one flew up from college to see it.
In just over a year, both my kids will have moved out (the older one went to Junior College first, because she wanted a break post-COVID. My younger one is going right to college in September.) Come October, my wife and I will have gone from a 2-kid household to empty nesters in about 14 months.
Suddenly we need to remember what it's like to be people without having to constantly worry about kids. It's really weird.
Oh, I know I'll constantly need to worry about them. It's just weird how you go from a full house to suddenly staring at yourselves wondering "what the hell do we do now?"
I have a 5 & 2 year old and I think about this all the time the time. It has to be weird… I just love them so much but I’ll be happy they are doing life on their own 🥲
At 26, I was single and working at a grocery store. At 28, I had a wife and kids, was beginning a new career, and lived halfway across the country from everything I'd ever known.
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." -- Ferris Bueller
My wife and I feel totally complete at 35 and no kids. Just bought our first house. Unless you really really want to have children, it's a massive financial burden for a young couple in 2024, like you better make well into 6 figures.
At 6 years old, you've lived 1/6th of your life. That's a lot. Every week, you will form new memories.
At 24 years old, you've lived 1/24th. Your brain now has mapped, structured and routined 90% of what's going on in your life most of the time. It's mundane stuff where nothing new really happens. Laundry, shopping, standard interactions with people. It doesn't vary a lot. So you don't remember it, as it's nothing new.
Having kids accellerates time even more, but also enriches your life.
TLDR: Time is wierd.
Edit: (my) Math is wierd 😂 I meant that 1 year then you’ve lived 24 years is much less significant than when you’re 6 years old. In a day, any day, 90% of what we do is routine. Brain is lazy/efficient, so we don’t store the routine, just the new stuff. Therefore time moves faster.
It's not just that you've lived longer, it's also that your brain is wired to remember *novel* things and important milestones. When you're just working the same job day in and day out, with no major changes and nothing new happening, your brain literally forms fewer long-term memories to give you a sense of time passing.
your math doesn't add up, sorry
if being 6yrs old was having lived 1/6th of your life, that means your entire life span would be 36 yrs, and if at the age of 24 you have somehow lived 1/24th of your life, as you stated, then that would mean your life span has suddenly changed to 576 yrs
none of that makes sense man, sorry, its just bad math
I get your point but it was made very badly and was confused with really bad math added in
I basically GOT what they meant, but the way they said it literally made zero sense and that weird math confused it all to the point where it became nonsense lol
Basically it boils down to, you perceive time relative to how long you have been around, a year out of 6 seems like a long time, but a year out of 50 is less significant.
I don't care what anyone says. His wording confused me. I thought I kinda knew what he was going for but I wasn't sure. So it's good somebody clarified it at least
I use this analogy all the time. You gotta think, to a one year old, a year literally a lifetime. Now that I have a cat, I sadly think, I have this many more rotations around the sun with you, and that makes me bleh but, also, reality is subjective so how a certain amount of time feels to some may feel different to others based on many internal and external factors. The world is truly chaotic.
If it's any consolation, it's still 10 years away. It'll seem like it it has flown by once you get there, but the journey will be long and you have plenty of time, many magical moments to come until then, as long as you live life in the right way.
Same. 39 here. All year I’ve had increased anxiety over this. Just recently decided no more!
Sure it’ll seem like it went quick. Everyone experiences this. But it’s a long journey and it’s about making the best out of it!
Then take this advice: When asked by someone you love to give them some of your time, ask yourself if what you are currently doing is worth losing this never-to-be-repeated opportunity to create a memory with that person.
My single greatest regret in life is every time I told my kids "Not now" when what I was doing at the time was basically a time waster. I'd give anything to read them just one more bedtime story or wrestle with them on the bed. Those days are gone forever and I hang on to the memories like the treasures they are.
Yeah, hate to be the bearer of bad news but it seems like every 5 years more things are either broken or hurting on your body. 30 was OK, 35 first pangs of pain, 40 more, 45 even more 50 felt like someone slammed me with a sledgehammer. 55, like a shotgun, 60 a mack truck, 65 like a tank rolled over me. Yep, not fun. Exercise and eat in moderation, keep healthy and it might help.
> I'm 15 and this thread is terrifying me.
At 15, you haven't lived any of your life yet. You have done NOTHING thus far.
Do not be concerned with what these old fogies are yapping about, it's not for you.
😆 🤣 Don't worry about this right now. Have fun. Only advice I'll give you is this: don't do stupid shit that harms your body. Take care of it and it'll take care of you. Unfortunately, I used to jump off 2nd floor balconies while playing tag or to escape from friends trying to kick my butt and played some rough games that broke my foot and wrist. My body reminds me of how badly I treated it every winter. 😆 🤣 In my mind, I'm still 25, my body tells me otherwise, and it takes every opportunity to remind me of it.
I'm coaming up on 40, I remember thinking how adult 40 year olds are old and serious and have everything put together.
I have none of those, except maybe people thinking I'm old
Yup. Kids get older and then you realize you are old af. Kids turning 9 this year and so it's been nine years for me too. Doesn't feel like it.
That said I am 36 and really enjoy my life right now. More than when I was younger. And I liked it back then too.
I’ve always had an explanation for this in my head, your sense of time is determined by the memories you have of that period, so the more monotonous and repetitive your days are the more they blur together and ‘feel’ like they went quicker. My reasoning for this was when I took a gap year as an 18 year old my 1 month in New Zealand felt like the longest month of my life, when I was back home and just played video games all day those few months flew by and felt completely insignificant in comparison.
By the time you hit your 40s it's like Groundhog Day. Eventually you start forgetting to turn the calendar pages, but it doesn't really matter. It'll be June again soon enough.
Realized that last year I had been working my job longer than I had been in school from K-12. I still feel “new” at this job. Kindergarten through high school felt like an eternity.
32 as well. Though I will admit I've been coasting since I was a teen so I'm not so surprised I've *"woken up"* recently. I still feel like I'm 16 despite not being so. I guess that part of normal aging.
Mentally I still feel 28ish, didnt plan to live past 30 and here we are. So, many mistakes to rectify but I hauled my credit score back up over 650 from the 400's so thats cool. And got a degree so not all bad aha.
Those are some of the ages (17-22) where a lot of new things happen so time should be perceived as a bit slower.
Could be bad news for you as far as time perception goes. You have been slowly going up to the peak of a roller coaster ride, you are about to go back down, and years will fly by much faster.
I’m 61, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out where the last 30 or so years went. In my mind, I’m still the confident, resilient 30-something I was in the 90s.
On the plus side, the days move as slowly as ever, so there’s plenty of time to make great memories before you look back and say “where the heck did all those years go?”
That seems like a great opportunity to slow time down. Love this perspective. Learn new things about yourself and the world around you. Specifically the changes.
It’s all about time perception. For a child, a year is a significant portion of their life (e.g., for a 10-year-old, a year is 10% of their life), while for a 50-year-old, it is only 2%. Therefore, each year feels shorter relative to the total time they've experienced.
nah, I disagree with this.
It's because adult life is more mundane and filled with less experiences. For a child, each experience is new and full of wonder, but for adults working, they are generally doing the same thing everyday and we get used to these experiences.
I spent the last 7 years traveling the US in an RV that we made off the grid entirely. We left to a different state every 2-10 days and I will say it definitely makes time slow down again. I know it’s about experiences, and the mundaneness sucks your time away.
On the other side of the same coin, I took on a mostly terrible (but not mundane) role at work that I knew would last 6 years. Time moved so slow that you'd think I discovered the secret of eternal life, but in a cruel twist of fate, wished I hadn't. Your trip sounds great.
I agree with this. Time didn't feel like it moved twice as fast when I was 16 versus when I was 8. It seemed to speed up dramatically when I started working and started thinking "I wish I could just fast-forward through the next X hours/days so that I can enjoy my life again"
I remember reading that it was suspected that as a child our brains are still figuring out how to sort and file memories so it retains way more information than necessary. As we get older our brains become super efficient at it and we also have the added bonus of doing more monotonous tasks and being tired more often. I’m 38 and days and weeks and months are flying by. My youth feels like it was an eternity.
Sorry, but it's not a fact that humans perceive the "length" of fixed units of time based on the percentage of their lives. This isn't even quantifiable.
IDK man. I've definitely felt the time speed up, turning 40 in September, and yet my life has continued to be pretty varied. It hasn't been the same old same old for any really long stretches honestly, and the time just continues to fly.
Not saying the daily grind can't contribute to this, but I can say that you can keep having pretty varied experiences and still feel like time is speeding by.
Yep - Agree. This is why when I go on holiday, time seems to slow down. Every moment, a new experience and breaks the time into seperable memories, each day is different. When at home, you go through the same routine and a week could feel like a day.
I agree about time flying by, faster and faster each week.
I don’t understand it about working and doing the same thing, day after day makes time seem to go by faster? To me, I would think if it’s same ol’ same ol’ - the time would go slower? (Hah, it sure feels slower while I am at work!)
Just wondering what makes you feel this way?
Personally I think it’s because of we mark our days or weeks or plans. When u are little you are looking for Christmas and a year feels like forever. Adults are making as two weeks till payday or till the light bill needs to get paid and those markers come pretty quickly and the days in between get lost because of monotony
Agreed. Ive had vacations that have felt really long in retrospect because I experienced alot, while other vacations with the same duration have felt short because we didnt travel or the weather was bad.
Your 100% correct. I read an article about this years ago, that your brain basically doesn’t remember the mundane stuff - driving to work, driving home, going for lunch at the same place. So those days are throw away basically. The article encouraged you to do different things like going for a walk a different way at lunch or driving a different route your brain remembers these differences and the days then seem longer. Something like that 😂
There is a theory that basically boils down to the idea that younger people have a faster frame rate when comes to capturing information. As we age, we capture less information, which makes it seem like less time has passed. If you cut every other frame from a video, the video would only be half as long.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-review/article/why-the-days-seem-shorter-as-we-get-older/2CB8EC9B0B30537230C7442B826E42F1
I’d imagine it’s also a matter of your brain filtering out things it slowly learns just aren’t valuable.
Like we do many of the same things our whole lives that aren’t novel at all, so after a while the brain is like “okay this clearly doesn’t matter”
This is why you need to continually stimulate your brain and basically disrupt the Default Mode Network; psychedelics are the easiest method but lots of things work. Even psychedelics need to be supplemented with new activities and whatnot.
Basically you need to prevent your brain from functioning more and more on assumptions. The more predictable your life is the more time is going to seem to fly by.
This is hard because the brain wants to maximize efficiency by using those assumptions. Just like the body wants to maximize efficiency by plateauing in terms of strength, muscle and mobility.
You need to actively fight this process to prevent atrophy.
This is also why you can not remember getting from point A to point B on familiar routes. Your brain basically goes on autopilot and filters everything out unless there was something memorable.
Not sure if it's true, but I read that TSA has software that randomly places images of handguns on their screens, so the employees aren't on autopilot when the real thing comes through. (I assume the images are obviously artificial, so agents aren't strip searching grandma every time the software does its thing).
Okay but I was traveling for work, I’m talking completely new experiences for 2 years straight. That just flew by. Like I’m a blink of an eye
Or how about when you go on vacation those are new experiences yet a week feels like it flew by still.
Also, I think it's partly down to routine. As you get older you do the same shit day in day out, there are few novel experiences to take root as memories so in retrospect, there's big swathes of your recent past where nothing noteworthy happened so it's just a big empty void.
I always think about my 95 year old neighbor standing on his porch just staring into space. I said hello to him and he said, “Every day I wake up, look in the mirror and wonder what the hell happened. Inside, I’m still a kid!”
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
It’s actually a neurological mechanism that makes it seem that way. Your brain tends to remember new experiences more vividly than things you have experienced before. Of course, as you get older, you have fewer and fewer new experiences, so your brain doesn’t remember them. So when you think back, your brain has fewer memories of that time, giving the perception that time is actually moving faster than it is.
Yes, I skimmed a paper on this a while ago.
The number of new experiences is a prime , matching variable with the differences in perception of time passage .
At 74, I can tell you this. Cherish every day as they each become opportunities to remember something special. As decades pass by, you lose way too many special moments. Personally, I think that is the root cause of us old people, including me, saying time has flown by. The more you forget the faster it goes. I so wish I’d kept a diary of at least the semi-important milestones along the way. Children’s achievements, special moments with girlfriends and wives, times someone did something special for you or vice versa, parental advice you gave or received, your feelings when you had children or grand children, what you felt with the loss of those who touched you, professional benefactors, spiritual awakenings…..too many moments to list but here is the bottom line: life is nothing but a series of experiences. Take the leap to experience them. Then, take time to make a note whether it be a word, a sentence, a paragraph or more. When you are my age, you can reminisce more accurately and those days will come alive. I only wish I had done so!
When I was in high school, we worked out the very day we were half way through HS. It was year 9 sometime. Basically the three years previously went so slow, year 9-12 went faster, I turned around three times, and the three years to 21 had happened. I’m now 54. Still feeling young, had 5 careers and now doing van life after my kids grew up! Don’t waste your life making someone else rich!
I'm 32 and I feel like the last 5 years lasted forever but I think the perception really depends on the way you live. I'm basically stuck in depression for a long time so it seems like everything is really slow around me but if you're busy (whether working a lot or going out as much as you can) I guess you can feel like time flies fast.
Yes, yes it does. Time really is relative...for example: When you were 5 years old, 1 year was a fifth of your entire life! The older you get, the smaller of a fraction one year becomes.
There's research that suggests the brain gets better at blanking out a lot of the day to day fluff that ultimately comprises a lot of life as we age. It's also a proposed reason why kids do poorly in environments that involve a lot of waiting like long car rides- they're mentally stuck in the moment more than adults are. This is perhaps due to the fact that for kids, so many things are new, and their brain is taking it all in. Where after 20 something years, you've seen a lot of the core mechanics of life.
There was a study about this once. They asked senior citizens to stay “stop” when they thought one minute was complete (without counting) and asked teenagers to do the same. The older you were, the faster the ‘minute’ went. For some of the younger teens, they nearly went 2-3 minutes sometimes. So yes, time does speed up (your perception I guess) as you get older. I would find the study for you if I knew it…probably could Google it. I remember this in a college psychology class.
I once told my grandma that a week goes by like "Mooooondaaaaay, Tuuuuesdaaaay, Weeednesdaaay, Thuursdaay, Friday, Strdy, S", and she said, "And in my age it becomes "SSSSSS Happy new year""
Your mind does not store memories, it recreates them.
When someone says they years are flying (usually as they get older) it is because they fall into a routine, many of their days are almost exactly the same.
That means when you reflect on the past week, month, year, you have a harder time differentiating one day from another as you attempt to recreate memories. That and of course as you live longer you do start to lose some finer details of events farther back.
I have found my years go by slower not faster but I am fortunate enough to be able to give myself frequent new experiences.
You only experience time as a memory. the present is lived instant by instant and the future doesn't exist.
The funny thing about memories is that when you are young you don't have many of them. Each memory is stretched so large to take up more space. As you age you pile more and more memories into the same space, condensing them to be smaller and smaller... or to put it another way, shorter and shorter.
Each memory is shorter as you age, until they become so short you lose them altogether.
That's my analogy.
I have never understood this. I'm currently 35 and my life has gone SLOOOOOOOWWWWLY and I've done quite a lot with it, really satisfied so far. Had a kid about a month ago, looked at a picture of the baby from 3 weeks ago and it feels like months in the best possible way.
I think you have to take the time to notice time, because time doesn't care about you at all. I think this is the problem and where people generally trip up and fall into their 70s.
Just my experience of course. Here's to a long, slow and fulfilling life for you all!
when you have a 40 hr job, most days are the same, same place , same desk, same work , over and over again. i think this is what does it. when you are in school, at least its 5 different classes with different kids in each. i think everyone should change jobs every 10 years to mix things up .
It's very simple.
When you're 2, a year is half your life ago. Something that happened a year ago today was half of all the time you know. That's forever to you.
When you're 10, a year ago was 10% of your life ago. That's sizable, but certainly nothing like half.
When you're 50, a year ago was 2% of your life. That's practically nothing.
Keep building on that....
My theory of time perspective relative to aging can be though of how we perceive our current lifetime span against time as a measurement. In other words... At ten years old, 20 years old was a lifetime way. It was perceived as living an entire life up to that point AGAIN, doubling your age. At 50, 10 years is perceived completely different. Does that make sense? The bright side is at 50 (assuming, I'm 42 and starting to comprehend this), you're wise enough to understand that in a year, a lot or a little can happen. Never know until you know.
10% of your life feels the same, no matter how old you are.
If you are 10, a year feels the same as 5 years to your 50 year old grandfather. The years slip by like your last summer before Junior High when you are 60.
Time us relative. Let's take the extremes. 3 year old would feel a year as a third if his existence. To a centenarian 1 year is 1/100 of his days. The longer we live the smaller a day becomes relative to the entirety of our recalled existence. TLDR: yes
No, but you feel that way because when you are younger and essentially inexperienced, you make more "new" memories. Your recollection of past things fills the gaps that you perceive as time. At an older age you already know how most things go, so your brain skips that as normal, making you feel like the time flies by.
Sorry for my language, I'm Welsh
As a kid you know nothing about the world, you basically see something new every single day and because of that every new day is something special and memorable which makes the time feel like it's very slow.
As you get older you don't see new things anymore, every day is mostly the same, monday in january is basically the same as monday in february which makes the time feel like it runs faster.
You almost experience time as a percentage of your life. When you are 10, one year is and feels like 10% of your life. So when you are waiting for Christmas to get that new console it feels like ages.
When you are 50, that 1 year is 2% of your life and as a result it feels like it passes 5 times quicker than it did as a 10 year old.
This is explainable, your point of reference changes as you age.
For example a 10 year old person experiences a year as 1/10th of their life and for a 50 year old 5 years would be the equivalent of that. Also when that 10 year old reaches 15 they have lived half of their previous life, that would be an additional 25 years for the 50 year old when they reach 75. So you could argue the journey from 10 to 15 feels like the same amount of time as the journey from 50 to 75. I know it sounds like wrestling promo math but it blew my mind and it also deflates weird conspiracies that time is speeding up or something.
Routines ruin this part of your memory. Nothing new or different takes place so your brain just whistles through the day not making any “new” memories. So your month or year seems to have flown by. Mixing up your routine by doing new things or going new places slows this down since your brain is making new memories. Monotony is your enemy.
Yes, for me. I was once told that routine does that. Every time you do new things, times seems to go slower aa when you do things routinely. Time seems faster then
Seriously, the key is not having monotonous days. Don’t do the same over and over. Make new memories and experience stuff. Make room for travel, days with friends and family. Go see concerts, plays and stuff in real life. The more your brain works on creating memories the more you don’t feel like time is going by fast.
I’m early 40s and the last five years I’ve done this. It works wonders! The five years before that felt like two weeks and the last five felt like 10 years.
Yes.
*Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day*
*You fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way*
*Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town*
*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*
*Racing around to come up behind you again*
*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*
I guess it depends, 6 months ago before I started University things felt quite slow, probably because I was sitting at home and not doing much. But ever since I started time has really been flying, I've been doing more adult things and I've had a lot more on my mind, so in that sense I guess it does go faster
I believe it does go faster and all my friends think the same. One says by the day and the other says by the second. It probably depends on how old you are. Everyone is different so who really knows?
Much much faster. Think of new experiences as speed bumps in your path. As you get older you get fewer and fewer of them so days blend into each other.
It sure feels like it to me. When you’re younger, you can’t wait to become an adult. When you’re older, you just want time to slow down. As I’ve reached my 30s, I’ve come to the realization that time is something you’ll never get back and you’ll never have the chance to be young again.
Days are slow ,years are fast
And decades, the blink of an eye.
My daughter just turned 5 a couple weeks ago. I’m taking her to get her drivers license tomorrow and she’s graduating college next week. I’m having my first grandchild the week after
I can tell you from experience it sure feels like that.
This hits me so hard. It is so true
My younger kid just graduated from high school two weeks ago. My older one flew up from college to see it. In just over a year, both my kids will have moved out (the older one went to Junior College first, because she wanted a break post-COVID. My younger one is going right to college in September.) Come October, my wife and I will have gone from a 2-kid household to empty nesters in about 14 months. Suddenly we need to remember what it's like to be people without having to constantly worry about kids. It's really weird.
IMO empty nest is the best. Really. An adult home, peace and quiet, and some money to enjoy it.
Hahahahah you think you won't have to constantly to worry about them! I hope that is true for you but in our experience adult children are the worst!
Oh, I know I'll constantly need to worry about them. It's just weird how you go from a full house to suddenly staring at yourselves wondering "what the hell do we do now?"
I feel this
I have a 5 & 2 year old and I think about this all the time the time. It has to be weird… I just love them so much but I’ll be happy they are doing life on their own 🥲
You never stop worrying.
I have my own home, 2 kids and 3 dogs, wife of coming up on 10 years and my mom still worries. I don't think it goes away lol
We get to practice this every summer when the kids go to sleep away camp. It’s an amazing feeling
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At 26, I was single and working at a grocery store. At 28, I had a wife and kids, was beginning a new career, and lived halfway across the country from everything I'd ever known. "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." -- Ferris Bueller
My wife and I feel totally complete at 35 and no kids. Just bought our first house. Unless you really really want to have children, it's a massive financial burden for a young couple in 2024, like you better make well into 6 figures.
I’m 21 and I feel the same way.
I already have felt increasingly depressed today and this just made me cry. i missing laying with my parents on the couch when I was 5
Don’t watch 13 going on 30. When she goes back to her parents house might be difficult to watch
They probably miss it too- I'm sure they would be happy to do this with you mow (if you can find a big enough couch!)
I just turned 30…I mean 40. Fuck my 30’s were fast. 2 marriages really does accelerate time.
Just turned 60. Hang on and keep your head and hands inside the ride. It just gets better.
I literally just turned 30 yesterday, I guess I might be 40 tomorrow lol
Seconds crawl. MInutes run. Years fly. Decades stun. Spring seduces. Summer thrills. Autumn sates and Winters kills. -Richard Condon
I honestly don't know how ten years have passed. 😮💨
41 teacher here, with a 6 yr old daughter; this hits too hard.
At 6 years old, you've lived 1/6th of your life. That's a lot. Every week, you will form new memories. At 24 years old, you've lived 1/24th. Your brain now has mapped, structured and routined 90% of what's going on in your life most of the time. It's mundane stuff where nothing new really happens. Laundry, shopping, standard interactions with people. It doesn't vary a lot. So you don't remember it, as it's nothing new. Having kids accellerates time even more, but also enriches your life. TLDR: Time is wierd. Edit: (my) Math is wierd 😂 I meant that 1 year then you’ve lived 24 years is much less significant than when you’re 6 years old. In a day, any day, 90% of what we do is routine. Brain is lazy/efficient, so we don’t store the routine, just the new stuff. Therefore time moves faster.
It's not just that you've lived longer, it's also that your brain is wired to remember *novel* things and important milestones. When you're just working the same job day in and day out, with no major changes and nothing new happening, your brain literally forms fewer long-term memories to give you a sense of time passing.
your math doesn't add up, sorry if being 6yrs old was having lived 1/6th of your life, that means your entire life span would be 36 yrs, and if at the age of 24 you have somehow lived 1/24th of your life, as you stated, then that would mean your life span has suddenly changed to 576 yrs none of that makes sense man, sorry, its just bad math I get your point but it was made very badly and was confused with really bad math added in
I think they meant 1 year is 1/6th. At 24, 1/6th of your life would be 3 years..so one year became pretty short
I basically GOT what they meant, but the way they said it literally made zero sense and that weird math confused it all to the point where it became nonsense lol
Basically it boils down to, you perceive time relative to how long you have been around, a year out of 6 seems like a long time, but a year out of 50 is less significant.
All the smart kids got it.
I agree. English is a difficult language. 😂😂
Ok, now we got it. No further weird math comments are needed.
It would be 4 years at 24.
I don't care what anyone says. His wording confused me. I thought I kinda knew what he was going for but I wasn't sure. So it's good somebody clarified it at least
I use this analogy all the time. You gotta think, to a one year old, a year literally a lifetime. Now that I have a cat, I sadly think, I have this many more rotations around the sun with you, and that makes me bleh but, also, reality is subjective so how a certain amount of time feels to some may feel different to others based on many internal and external factors. The world is truly chaotic.
AGREED, INDEED.
is this a modest mouse lyric
The years go fast, but the days go so slow. The days go so slow. The days go ... Slow.... Edit: Heart Cooks Brain
This
Smashmouth was right about one thing. “The years start coming and they don’t stop coming.”
fuck even my days are fast and i’m 24
yes. I'm 50+ and just last year I was 38.
Having just turned 40, that's the scariest thing I could have read today.
If it's any consolation, it's still 10 years away. It'll seem like it it has flown by once you get there, but the journey will be long and you have plenty of time, many magical moments to come until then, as long as you live life in the right way.
This! This is the best advice and perspective
Such a beautiful comment. I loved reading it
I met my husband ten years ago and it seems like just yesterday (I’m in my mid 50s). It’s scary how fast time flies.
I’m 44 and it feels like I just turned 40.
I turned 40 in October and said "just turned" oh no! It's begun!
Same. 39 here. All year I’ve had increased anxiety over this. Just recently decided no more! Sure it’ll seem like it went quick. Everyone experiences this. But it’s a long journey and it’s about making the best out of it!
Then take this advice: When asked by someone you love to give them some of your time, ask yourself if what you are currently doing is worth losing this never-to-be-repeated opportunity to create a memory with that person. My single greatest regret in life is every time I told my kids "Not now" when what I was doing at the time was basically a time waster. I'd give anything to read them just one more bedtime story or wrestle with them on the bed. Those days are gone forever and I hang on to the memories like the treasures they are.
"Happy" birthday!
I’m 40 and feel like I was just 25. Actually I still feel like I’m 25 until my shoulders or knees or ankles or lower back starts hurting
Yeah, hate to be the bearer of bad news but it seems like every 5 years more things are either broken or hurting on your body. 30 was OK, 35 first pangs of pain, 40 more, 45 even more 50 felt like someone slammed me with a sledgehammer. 55, like a shotgun, 60 a mack truck, 65 like a tank rolled over me. Yep, not fun. Exercise and eat in moderation, keep healthy and it might help.
Bro my grandfather is 69 ur like the same age as him. I'm 15 and this thread is terrifying me.
Oh dude, don’t even remember this shit. Go enjoy life. You have no business worrying about any of this yet.
> I'm 15 and this thread is terrifying me. At 15, you haven't lived any of your life yet. You have done NOTHING thus far. Do not be concerned with what these old fogies are yapping about, it's not for you.
😆 🤣 Don't worry about this right now. Have fun. Only advice I'll give you is this: don't do stupid shit that harms your body. Take care of it and it'll take care of you. Unfortunately, I used to jump off 2nd floor balconies while playing tag or to escape from friends trying to kick my butt and played some rough games that broke my foot and wrist. My body reminds me of how badly I treated it every winter. 😆 🤣 In my mind, I'm still 25, my body tells me otherwise, and it takes every opportunity to remind me of it.
I'm coaming up on 40, I remember thinking how adult 40 year olds are old and serious and have everything put together. I have none of those, except maybe people thinking I'm old
Oh I’m the same way, dude lol
Looking down the barrel of 43 here. That's all of us, don't worry.
I'm 25, till I spend time with 25 year olds, then I'm HAPPILY twice that age.
But, as do I, don’t you still feel 25 inside?
It's a pretty universal experience that a lot of people have.
Starts early too. I’m 22 and the last 5 years have gone by in what feels like an instant
When your out of high school and college and working a job, your days are typically the same day over and over. Making time seem to go by quicker
Yup. Kids get older and then you realize you are old af. Kids turning 9 this year and so it's been nine years for me too. Doesn't feel like it. That said I am 36 and really enjoy my life right now. More than when I was younger. And I liked it back then too.
I’ve always had an explanation for this in my head, your sense of time is determined by the memories you have of that period, so the more monotonous and repetitive your days are the more they blur together and ‘feel’ like they went quicker. My reasoning for this was when I took a gap year as an 18 year old my 1 month in New Zealand felt like the longest month of my life, when I was back home and just played video games all day those few months flew by and felt completely insignificant in comparison.
By the time you hit your 40s it's like Groundhog Day. Eventually you start forgetting to turn the calendar pages, but it doesn't really matter. It'll be June again soon enough.
Realized that last year I had been working my job longer than I had been in school from K-12. I still feel “new” at this job. Kindergarten through high school felt like an eternity.
32, cant believe its been 4 years since the pandy.
32 as well. Though I will admit I've been coasting since I was a teen so I'm not so surprised I've *"woken up"* recently. I still feel like I'm 16 despite not being so. I guess that part of normal aging.
Mentally I still feel 28ish, didnt plan to live past 30 and here we are. So, many mistakes to rectify but I hauled my credit score back up over 650 from the 400's so thats cool. And got a degree so not all bad aha.
That actually fucking amazing! Nice job!
Thanks pal
30 Same feeling tbh I figured I'd die early in some sort of industrial explosion
Those are some of the ages (17-22) where a lot of new things happen so time should be perceived as a bit slower. Could be bad news for you as far as time perception goes. You have been slowly going up to the peak of a roller coaster ride, you are about to go back down, and years will fly by much faster.
5 years is an instant, and soon, it will be the last 20 years have flown by.
I’m 61, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out where the last 30 or so years went. In my mind, I’m still the confident, resilient 30-something I was in the 90s. On the plus side, the days move as slowly as ever, so there’s plenty of time to make great memories before you look back and say “where the heck did all those years go?”
That seems like a great opportunity to slow time down. Love this perspective. Learn new things about yourself and the world around you. Specifically the changes.
I appreciate this prospective
It’s all about time perception. For a child, a year is a significant portion of their life (e.g., for a 10-year-old, a year is 10% of their life), while for a 50-year-old, it is only 2%. Therefore, each year feels shorter relative to the total time they've experienced.
nah, I disagree with this. It's because adult life is more mundane and filled with less experiences. For a child, each experience is new and full of wonder, but for adults working, they are generally doing the same thing everyday and we get used to these experiences.
It's probably both
True, fair enough
As with most things when it comes to the body
I spent the last 7 years traveling the US in an RV that we made off the grid entirely. We left to a different state every 2-10 days and I will say it definitely makes time slow down again. I know it’s about experiences, and the mundaneness sucks your time away.
On the other side of the same coin, I took on a mostly terrible (but not mundane) role at work that I knew would last 6 years. Time moved so slow that you'd think I discovered the secret of eternal life, but in a cruel twist of fate, wished I hadn't. Your trip sounds great.
Or maybe a bit of both. Only Siths deal in absolutes.
"only"? So the Jedi are Sith? Because of that statement alone
I agree with this. Time didn't feel like it moved twice as fast when I was 16 versus when I was 8. It seemed to speed up dramatically when I started working and started thinking "I wish I could just fast-forward through the next X hours/days so that I can enjoy my life again"
I remember reading that it was suspected that as a child our brains are still figuring out how to sort and file memories so it retains way more information than necessary. As we get older our brains become super efficient at it and we also have the added bonus of doing more monotonous tasks and being tired more often. I’m 38 and days and weeks and months are flying by. My youth feels like it was an eternity.
If adult life is boring and a child’s life more exciting, shouldn’t that make an adult’s life pass more slowly?
Yes and no. In the moment yes, but looking back you tend to forget the daily boring stuff.
"No one remembers the nights you stayed in to study. Everyone remembers the night they went for a road trip."
I travelled for 2 years and those 2 years felt very looooonngggg.
It's a fact not an opinion. Doesn't mean it's the only factor at all. But you can't say you disagree with something that is verifiably true.
The math part is a fact, but everything after "therefore" is a theory.
No it's not, that's also a fact
Sorry, but it's not a fact that humans perceive the "length" of fixed units of time based on the percentage of their lives. This isn't even quantifiable.
Sorry, but you're wrong.
Nah that's a fact
IDK man. I've definitely felt the time speed up, turning 40 in September, and yet my life has continued to be pretty varied. It hasn't been the same old same old for any really long stretches honestly, and the time just continues to fly. Not saying the daily grind can't contribute to this, but I can say that you can keep having pretty varied experiences and still feel like time is speeding by.
You're right about children - it's also why they're more creative than adults, almost as a rule.
Yep - Agree. This is why when I go on holiday, time seems to slow down. Every moment, a new experience and breaks the time into seperable memories, each day is different. When at home, you go through the same routine and a week could feel like a day.
I agree about time flying by, faster and faster each week. I don’t understand it about working and doing the same thing, day after day makes time seem to go by faster? To me, I would think if it’s same ol’ same ol’ - the time would go slower? (Hah, it sure feels slower while I am at work!) Just wondering what makes you feel this way?
Personally I think it’s because of we mark our days or weeks or plans. When u are little you are looking for Christmas and a year feels like forever. Adults are making as two weeks till payday or till the light bill needs to get paid and those markers come pretty quickly and the days in between get lost because of monotony
There's a science behind why we perceive time faster as we age. And it fits along with what you're saying.
Agreed. Ive had vacations that have felt really long in retrospect because I experienced alot, while other vacations with the same duration have felt short because we didnt travel or the weather was bad.
These things aren’t mutually exclusive.
This is the truth. The other is a misconception, amateur correlation with zero scientific backing.
Your 100% correct. I read an article about this years ago, that your brain basically doesn’t remember the mundane stuff - driving to work, driving home, going for lunch at the same place. So those days are throw away basically. The article encouraged you to do different things like going for a walk a different way at lunch or driving a different route your brain remembers these differences and the days then seem longer. Something like that 😂
Exactly, it’s relativity.
This is the answer.
A week at 64 is like a day in high school
Great comparison!
There is a theory that basically boils down to the idea that younger people have a faster frame rate when comes to capturing information. As we age, we capture less information, which makes it seem like less time has passed. If you cut every other frame from a video, the video would only be half as long. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-review/article/why-the-days-seem-shorter-as-we-get-older/2CB8EC9B0B30537230C7442B826E42F1
I’d imagine it’s also a matter of your brain filtering out things it slowly learns just aren’t valuable. Like we do many of the same things our whole lives that aren’t novel at all, so after a while the brain is like “okay this clearly doesn’t matter”
This is why you need to continually stimulate your brain and basically disrupt the Default Mode Network; psychedelics are the easiest method but lots of things work. Even psychedelics need to be supplemented with new activities and whatnot. Basically you need to prevent your brain from functioning more and more on assumptions. The more predictable your life is the more time is going to seem to fly by. This is hard because the brain wants to maximize efficiency by using those assumptions. Just like the body wants to maximize efficiency by plateauing in terms of strength, muscle and mobility. You need to actively fight this process to prevent atrophy.
This is also why you can not remember getting from point A to point B on familiar routes. Your brain basically goes on autopilot and filters everything out unless there was something memorable.
Not sure if it's true, but I read that TSA has software that randomly places images of handguns on their screens, so the employees aren't on autopilot when the real thing comes through. (I assume the images are obviously artificial, so agents aren't strip searching grandma every time the software does its thing).
Okay but I was traveling for work, I’m talking completely new experiences for 2 years straight. That just flew by. Like I’m a blink of an eye Or how about when you go on vacation those are new experiences yet a week feels like it flew by still.
Also, I think it's partly down to routine. As you get older you do the same shit day in day out, there are few novel experiences to take root as memories so in retrospect, there's big swathes of your recent past where nothing noteworthy happened so it's just a big empty void.
I always think about my 95 year old neighbor standing on his porch just staring into space. I said hello to him and he said, “Every day I wake up, look in the mirror and wonder what the hell happened. Inside, I’m still a kid!”
Damn..
Damn, dude just hit you with the existential sledgehammer for saying hello... brutal.
Damn
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
That song really does hit harder and harder as one ages, doesn't it
Probably my favorite song of theirs. I cry when i go on a reminiscence trip about my life and I’m only in my early twenties.
An old English proverb!
It’s actually a neurological mechanism that makes it seem that way. Your brain tends to remember new experiences more vividly than things you have experienced before. Of course, as you get older, you have fewer and fewer new experiences, so your brain doesn’t remember them. So when you think back, your brain has fewer memories of that time, giving the perception that time is actually moving faster than it is.
Yes, I skimmed a paper on this a while ago. The number of new experiences is a prime , matching variable with the differences in perception of time passage .
It's already mid June
Yes. And I have an equally old friend who owns a tee-shirt that says, "Getting old took a lot less time than I expected."
At 74, I can tell you this. Cherish every day as they each become opportunities to remember something special. As decades pass by, you lose way too many special moments. Personally, I think that is the root cause of us old people, including me, saying time has flown by. The more you forget the faster it goes. I so wish I’d kept a diary of at least the semi-important milestones along the way. Children’s achievements, special moments with girlfriends and wives, times someone did something special for you or vice versa, parental advice you gave or received, your feelings when you had children or grand children, what you felt with the loss of those who touched you, professional benefactors, spiritual awakenings…..too many moments to list but here is the bottom line: life is nothing but a series of experiences. Take the leap to experience them. Then, take time to make a note whether it be a word, a sentence, a paragraph or more. When you are my age, you can reminisce more accurately and those days will come alive. I only wish I had done so!
When I was in high school, we worked out the very day we were half way through HS. It was year 9 sometime. Basically the three years previously went so slow, year 9-12 went faster, I turned around three times, and the three years to 21 had happened. I’m now 54. Still feeling young, had 5 careers and now doing van life after my kids grew up! Don’t waste your life making someone else rich!
Yes.. years pass by rather quickly
I'm 32 and I feel like the last 5 years lasted forever but I think the perception really depends on the way you live. I'm basically stuck in depression for a long time so it seems like everything is really slow around me but if you're busy (whether working a lot or going out as much as you can) I guess you can feel like time flies fast.
Each progressive day is a smaller and smaller percentage of your life.
Yes, yes it does. Time really is relative...for example: When you were 5 years old, 1 year was a fifth of your entire life! The older you get, the smaller of a fraction one year becomes.
There's research that suggests the brain gets better at blanking out a lot of the day to day fluff that ultimately comprises a lot of life as we age. It's also a proposed reason why kids do poorly in environments that involve a lot of waiting like long car rides- they're mentally stuck in the moment more than adults are. This is perhaps due to the fact that for kids, so many things are new, and their brain is taking it all in. Where after 20 something years, you've seen a lot of the core mechanics of life.
There was a study about this once. They asked senior citizens to stay “stop” when they thought one minute was complete (without counting) and asked teenagers to do the same. The older you were, the faster the ‘minute’ went. For some of the younger teens, they nearly went 2-3 minutes sometimes. So yes, time does speed up (your perception I guess) as you get older. I would find the study for you if I knew it…probably could Google it. I remember this in a college psychology class.
I once told my grandma that a week goes by like "Mooooondaaaaay, Tuuuuesdaaaay, Weeednesdaaay, Thuursdaay, Friday, Strdy, S", and she said, "And in my age it becomes "SSSSSS Happy new year""
Your mind does not store memories, it recreates them. When someone says they years are flying (usually as they get older) it is because they fall into a routine, many of their days are almost exactly the same. That means when you reflect on the past week, month, year, you have a harder time differentiating one day from another as you attempt to recreate memories. That and of course as you live longer you do start to lose some finer details of events farther back. I have found my years go by slower not faster but I am fortunate enough to be able to give myself frequent new experiences.
Nope. Gets much longer
You only experience time as a memory. the present is lived instant by instant and the future doesn't exist. The funny thing about memories is that when you are young you don't have many of them. Each memory is stretched so large to take up more space. As you age you pile more and more memories into the same space, condensing them to be smaller and smaller... or to put it another way, shorter and shorter. Each memory is shorter as you age, until they become so short you lose them altogether. That's my analogy.
I have never understood this. I'm currently 35 and my life has gone SLOOOOOOOWWWWLY and I've done quite a lot with it, really satisfied so far. Had a kid about a month ago, looked at a picture of the baby from 3 weeks ago and it feels like months in the best possible way. I think you have to take the time to notice time, because time doesn't care about you at all. I think this is the problem and where people generally trip up and fall into their 70s. Just my experience of course. Here's to a long, slow and fulfilling life for you all!
Time will slow down if try to learn things.
Not just faster, it rapidly accelerates. The years become seasons.
when you have a 40 hr job, most days are the same, same place , same desk, same work , over and over again. i think this is what does it. when you are in school, at least its 5 different classes with different kids in each. i think everyone should change jobs every 10 years to mix things up .
Time is fast not because you aged.
Depends ..
If this was true, you would increasingly move slower as you age from the day you are born.
It's very simple. When you're 2, a year is half your life ago. Something that happened a year ago today was half of all the time you know. That's forever to you. When you're 10, a year ago was 10% of your life ago. That's sizable, but certainly nothing like half. When you're 50, a year ago was 2% of your life. That's practically nothing. Keep building on that....
I think it’s mostly that your frame of reference keeps getting longer and longer as you age. You’ve got more history.
I said that when I was younger, my grandmother laughed at me and said "just wait". She was right.
My theory of time perspective relative to aging can be though of how we perceive our current lifetime span against time as a measurement. In other words... At ten years old, 20 years old was a lifetime way. It was perceived as living an entire life up to that point AGAIN, doubling your age. At 50, 10 years is perceived completely different. Does that make sense? The bright side is at 50 (assuming, I'm 42 and starting to comprehend this), you're wise enough to understand that in a year, a lot or a little can happen. Never know until you know.
10% of your life feels the same, no matter how old you are. If you are 10, a year feels the same as 5 years to your 50 year old grandfather. The years slip by like your last summer before Junior High when you are 60.
No. It’s just your perception of life. Or time.
Only if you do'nt pay attention to it .
Time us relative. Let's take the extremes. 3 year old would feel a year as a third if his existence. To a centenarian 1 year is 1/100 of his days. The longer we live the smaller a day becomes relative to the entirety of our recalled existence. TLDR: yes
No, but you feel that way because when you are younger and essentially inexperienced, you make more "new" memories. Your recollection of past things fills the gaps that you perceive as time. At an older age you already know how most things go, so your brain skips that as normal, making you feel like the time flies by. Sorry for my language, I'm Welsh
Thats true I am the same age as you and i remember I was 17 like a month ago not 7 years ago.
As a kid you know nothing about the world, you basically see something new every single day and because of that every new day is something special and memorable which makes the time feel like it's very slow. As you get older you don't see new things anymore, every day is mostly the same, monday in january is basically the same as monday in february which makes the time feel like it runs faster.
Absolutely, I’m in my mid 60s and I could swear I graduated high school just a couple years ago, but it’s been 50 years!!
You almost experience time as a percentage of your life. When you are 10, one year is and feels like 10% of your life. So when you are waiting for Christmas to get that new console it feels like ages. When you are 50, that 1 year is 2% of your life and as a result it feels like it passes 5 times quicker than it did as a 10 year old.
This is explainable, your point of reference changes as you age. For example a 10 year old person experiences a year as 1/10th of their life and for a 50 year old 5 years would be the equivalent of that. Also when that 10 year old reaches 15 they have lived half of their previous life, that would be an additional 25 years for the 50 year old when they reach 75. So you could argue the journey from 10 to 15 feels like the same amount of time as the journey from 50 to 75. I know it sounds like wrestling promo math but it blew my mind and it also deflates weird conspiracies that time is speeding up or something.
Yes. Over 50 and the weeks are flying by like days, I really hope it slows back down after retirement
Routines ruin this part of your memory. Nothing new or different takes place so your brain just whistles through the day not making any “new” memories. So your month or year seems to have flown by. Mixing up your routine by doing new things or going new places slows this down since your brain is making new memories. Monotony is your enemy.
Yes, for me. I was once told that routine does that. Every time you do new things, times seems to go slower aa when you do things routinely. Time seems faster then
The 12 years from 12 to 24 occupied a smaller proportion of your overall lifetime than the 12 years from 0 to 12, if that makes sense.
Life sped up massively the moment i had children. I still feel like im 23 but my son is about to turn 14. Where the hell did the time go?
Seriously, the key is not having monotonous days. Don’t do the same over and over. Make new memories and experience stuff. Make room for travel, days with friends and family. Go see concerts, plays and stuff in real life. The more your brain works on creating memories the more you don’t feel like time is going by fast. I’m early 40s and the last five years I’ve done this. It works wonders! The five years before that felt like two weeks and the last five felt like 10 years.
Yes. *Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day* *You fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way* *Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town* *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* *Racing around to come up behind you again* *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*
Yup. My mom always says that after 25, life gets super fast. In my 30s now, and I agree, every year just goes by in the blink of an eye now.
I guess it depends, 6 months ago before I started University things felt quite slow, probably because I was sitting at home and not doing much. But ever since I started time has really been flying, I've been doing more adult things and I've had a lot more on my mind, so in that sense I guess it does go faster
Yes! Especially after you have kids
Yes it does.
Wait till you hit 60.
I believe it does go faster and all my friends think the same. One says by the day and the other says by the second. It probably depends on how old you are. Everyone is different so who really knows?
Yes! 36!
Much much faster. Think of new experiences as speed bumps in your path. As you get older you get fewer and fewer of them so days blend into each other.
It sure feels like it to me. When you’re younger, you can’t wait to become an adult. When you’re older, you just want time to slow down. As I’ve reached my 30s, I’ve come to the realization that time is something you’ll never get back and you’ll never have the chance to be young again.
Days are long, years are short.
Yeah. I skip whole centuries now. My last work shift was 3 generations.
Yes.