Here is why time flies as you age.

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Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,901
12,368
126
www.anyf.ca
I find it's actually ridiculous how fast time goes now. It seems to me as soon as I finished school, that's when time really started to go by fast. I find time goes so fast I have to rush to get anything done or the day is gone just like that.
 

lozina

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
11,709
8
81
I find it's actually ridiculous how fast time goes now. It seems to me as soon as I finished school, that's when time really started to go by fast. I find time goes so fast I have to rush to get anything done or the day is gone just like that.

If you really like the feeling of time going slowly, try laying in a hospital bed recovering after a surgery. I was only 3 days like that, bound to my bed by tubes and wires, and it felt like an eternity.
 

Vdubchaos

Lifer
Nov 11, 2009
10,411
10
0
No, it doesn't.

Lot of you guys are completely missing the point.

No one is arguing that 1 min is not a min or day is not a day....time always goes by at the same pace.

HOWEVER, due to our span of existence on this planet, longer you live the faster the time goes as these measurements become fractions of what it used to be.
 

Vdubchaos

Lifer
Nov 11, 2009
10,411
10
0
If you really like the feeling of time going slowly, try laying in a hospital bed recovering after a surgery. I was only 3 days like that, bound to my bed by tubes and wires, and it felt like an eternity.

Ok but we are not talking about days or certain life events. We are talking about LONG spans of time (years)....not min/hours or days.
 

Rakehellion

Lifer
Jan 15, 2013
12,182
35
91
Lot of you guys are completely missing the point.

No one is arguing that 1 min is not a min or day is not a day....time always goes by at the same pace.

HOWEVER, due to our span of existence on this planet, longer you live the faster the time goes as these measurements become fractions of what it used to be.

Okay, that's completely different from when you said that time literally goes faster as you age.
 

Via

Diamond Member
Jan 14, 2009
4,695
4
0
When you're young your frame of reference is constantly changing. We're not the same person at 7 that we are at 10, or 10 that we are at 12, or 12 at 15, or 15 at 18.

Most of us become the person we will be for the rest of our lives in our early 20's. That's when the frame of reference becomes permanent.

You don't hear a 14 year old say "That happened five years ago??!?!?!?" because they were 9 at the time and a completely different person. The mindset of the 9 year old doesn't exist for the 14 year anymore.

It's fairly common, however, to hear a 30, or 40, or 50 year old say the same thing. Their frame of reference has remained constant for a while, and their mind tricks them into believing that time has passed faster than it actually did.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,901
12,368
126
www.anyf.ca
If you really like the feeling of time going slowly, try laying in a hospital bed recovering after a surgery. I was only 3 days like that, bound to my bed by tubes and wires, and it felt like an eternity.

Yeah being in that situation would suck. Seems if you are having fun or simply have lot to do, time goes by super fast, if you are in a boring/crappy situation then it goes super slow.

Oddly, even 12 hour night shifts go by pretty quick I find. Faster than 12 hour day shifts.
 

BudAshes

Lifer
Jul 20, 2003
13,920
3,203
146
That has no bearing on the correct explanation for the topic at hand.



Look - no ratios! He can't possibly be right then.

I also agree with what you posted as well. The theories are not incompatible. Sorry to rain on your righteous nerd parade.
 

dighn

Lifer
Aug 12, 2001
22,820
4
81
Yeah being in that situation would suck. Seems if you are having fun or simply have lot to do, time goes by super fast, if you are in a boring/crappy situation then it goes super slow.

Oddly, even 12 hour night shifts go by pretty quick I find. Faster than 12 hour day shifts.

if you are bored, time goes slowly in the present, but afterwards it actually feels like less time in your memories because there's nothing memorable about the experience. this is why once you settle into a routine, time flies (in your memories) because all that experience can be compressed down. i think this also contributes in part to the "speeding up" of life for adults.
 
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z1ggy

Lifer
May 17, 2008
10,004
63
91
Well, if you really think about it....it does go faster.

Time is something that humans invented and placed into mathematics to explain the "flow" of events. Your brain determines it, relatively, and for each person/situation it may be different.

The reason you may feel like time goes faster as you get older is because with each experience you have, your brain has to store it away, and over time as you recall earlier events, your brain needs to sift through more and more info. Things get left out and you simply sometimes are only able to realize that you have experienced "xyz" amount of events, but feel as if much much more has happened.

IMO, this is why sometimes a work week feels so long, but your recent birthday just a few months ago feels like it just happened.
 

Via

Diamond Member
Jan 14, 2009
4,695
4
0
A mayfly lives for a day, but maybe in it's concept of time that day takes 70 years to go by.
 

T9D

Diamond Member
Dec 1, 2001
5,320
6
0
It's hormones and energy. When you are a kid you are taking in everything around you. You have energy, you move quicker, you think quicker, everything is new and fun. So time seems to go way slower around you. Because it seems much more is happening, more to take in, more to process. Think of it this way, you're on crazy scary roller coaster, it seems to last for ages, yet it's just a few minutes.

Now imagine you're an adult and you're on a pleasant slow drift down a pretty river on beautiful day in the spring. Before you know it the whole day has passed you by.


Childhood is this fast pace rollercoaster ride that seems to not end, adulthood is the slow river drift that causes the day to be over before you know it.

Have you ever worked a day where it never ever seems to end? Exactly. It's not those slow relaxed easy days. It's the hectic frustrating ones. And so is childhood.
 
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Juddog

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2006
7,852
6
81
The personality being formed in the early years can be witnessed during the end stages, when old people start gaining dementia. They forget about the more recent years, and the further the dementia increases, the more of a young area of life their mind regresses to. For example my cousin's mother is at the stage now where she thinks her daughter is actually her mom and has the personality that she did as an 8 year old.
 

Scarpozzi

Lifer
Jun 13, 2000
26,389
1,778
126
Yada, yada, yada, perception.....yada, yada, yada mistakes....yada, yada, yada, regret......yada, yada, yada, the the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon.

Every day has the same number of hours. Some people tend to notice them more than others at different points in their lives. Responsibility can make those hours fly by or creep by depending on what you're paying attention to. Hindsight is 20/20 and perception of time in the past gets lumped into a few seconds of thought... I think it's neat that I can remember bits and pieces of my life that took days, months, or years by hitting hte high notes.
 

natto fire

Diamond Member
Jan 4, 2000
7,117
10
76
Well, if you really think about it....it does go faster.

So if I spent 10 years watching an atomic clock and someone else only spent 5 years watching an atomic clock, and we then communicated what our clocks read 15 years later they would be different? Because that seems pretty unlikely, if you really think about it.

I am not arguing with your math as far as ratios, but the human variable throws the "hard math" out the window. I cannot speak for anyone else because we all perceive the passage of time differently, but the years definitely seem shorter now that I am older as a whole. However, there have also certain situations, relationships, and drugs that vastly altered my perception of time passing by a large amount, although temporarily.

Trying to boil down life to a math equation seems kind of sad to me, but that is part of why people are so great in their variety, because collectively we have done a lot of cool things.
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,930
5,802
126
It's hormones and energy. When you are a kid you are taking in everything around you. You have energy, you move quicker, you think quicker, everything is new and fun. So time seems to go way slower around you. Because it seems much more is happening, more to take in, more to process. Think of it this way, you're on crazy scary roller coaster, it seems to last for ages, yet it's just a few minutes.

i disagree with this. i can think much faster now than i can when i was younger. also, when i go on vacations to new places, the vacations seem to fly by even though everything is new and fun. i never want it to end but it always seems to fly by.

roller coasters to me have always felt so short too, i wish they were longer every time i'm at the end of one!
 

Vdubchaos

Lifer
Nov 11, 2009
10,411
10
0
So if I spent 10 years watching an atomic clock and someone else only spent 5 years watching an atomic clock, and we then communicated what our clocks read 15 years later they would be different? Because that seems pretty unlikely, if you really think about it.

I am not arguing with your math as far as ratios, but the human variable throws the "hard math" out the window. I cannot speak for anyone else because we all perceive the passage of time differently, but the years definitely seem shorter now that I am older as a whole. However, there have also certain situations, relationships, and drugs that vastly altered my perception of time passing by a large amount, although temporarily.

Trying to boil down life to a math equation seems kind of sad to me, but that is part of why people are so great in their variety, because collectively we have done a lot of cool things.

There is an exception to EVERY rule.

In general, 1/10th of your life will feel much longer than 1/30th or 1/60th of your life.

Regardless if you want to accept this fact or dismiss it.
 

ControlD

Diamond Member
Apr 25, 2005
5,440
44
91
There is an exception to EVERY rule.

In general, 1/10th of your life will feel much longer than 1/30th or 1/60th of your life.

Regardless if you want to accept this fact or dismiss it.

Well, 1/10th should feel longer than 1/30th or 1/60th because it is in fact a longer period of time.

What you have been arguing is just the opposite right? That as you age time goes by faster (which is silly, only your perception of time changes). So you are in fact saying that 1/30th or 1/60th of your life (when you are young) feels longer than 1/10th of your life, or in fact an even larger number depending on what your definition of young and old is. I can buy that time feels like it is going by faster when you are older. Time itself however is moving at the same rate regardless of what your perception is.
 

SP33Demon

Lifer
Jun 22, 2001
27,929
142
106
C'mon people, just wiki this shit. There has been research in this area already.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Changes_in_temporal_perception_with_aging
Changes in temporal perception with aging[edit source | editbeta]
Psychologists have found that a human's perception of the passing of time tends to speed up with increasing age, which causes older people to increasingly underestimate a given interval of time.[15] Very young children literally "live in time" before gaining an awareness of its passing. A child will first experience the passing of time when he or she can subjectively perceive and reflect on the unfolding of a collection of events. The awareness of time improves during childhood as children's attention and short-term memory capacities develop, a process dependent on the slow maturation of the prefrontal cortex. One day to an eleven-year-old would be approximately 1/4,000 of their life, while one day to a 55-year-old would be approximately 1/20,000 of their life. This helps to explain why, on average, a random day usually appears much longer for a young child than for an adult.[16]
The common explanation is that most external and internal experiences are new for young children, while most experiences are comfortably and boringly repetitive for adults. Children have to be extremely engaged (i.e., dedicate many neural resources or much brain power) in the present moment, because they must constantly reconfigure their mental models of the world to assimilate it and properly behave within it. On the contrary, most adults fall into mental habits and external routines that they rarely step outside of. When an adult experiences this overstimulation of the same stimuli, it somewhat renders said stimuli "invisible", because they have sufficiently and effectively mapped it in their brain- a phenomenon known as neural adaptation. As a consequence, an adult's perception of time speeds up because they will literally pay less attention to the continuous unfolding and duration of events. In an experiment comparing a group of subjects aged between 19 and 24 and a group between 60 and 80 asked to estimate when they thought 3 minutes had passed, it was found that the younger group's estimate was on average 3 minutes and 3 seconds, while the older group averaged 3 minutes and 40 seconds, indicating a significant change in one's perception of time with age.[17]
 

Midwayman

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2000
5,723
325
126
I read a legit psychology article awhile that talked about how its a perceptual shift. That essentially the number of "ticks" per second we use lowers as we get older. That we remember waiting an hour to go out an play was say 600 ticks. Now as an adult only 100 of these 'ticks' might happen as a result or perception of time changes. (numbers made up)
 
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