“Time flies.” It’s a phrase you’ve probably heard — or said yourself — as the weeks, months, and years add up and life marches rapidly forward. But is there any truth behind the feeling that time speeds up as we get older?
Researchers have spent years investigating why time can seem to pass more quickly with age. A 2019 study published by Cambridge University Press identified a scientific “misalignment between mental-image time and clock time.”
“The reason is that the measurable ‘clock time’ is not the same as the time perceived by the human mind,” the study revealed. While clock time refers to the literal 24-hour day, “mind time” is shaped by the images and experiences we accumulate throughout our lives.
Mental healthcare company ReachLink has identified five possible reasons time appears to speed up as we age, with the first being something known as proportional theory.
At age 10, one year of life represents 10 percent of everything you’ve experienced. But at age 50, that same year represents just two percent of your life experience. That’s what the proportional theory is at its core: the idea that each new year of life decreases as a fraction of the whole.
The company also pointed to novelty deficit as another factor that contributes to time acceleration.
Novelty deficit is the idea that memory doesn’t record time evenly, but instead remembers distinct events. When your routine looks largely the same week after week and month after month, there are fewer new memories to distinguish one period from another. As a result, time can feel compressed when you look back on it.
Then there’s attention absorption, which occurs when your brain goes on autopilot during familiar or habitual tasks, making you less aware of the passage of time. When you’re absorbed in a task, your cognitive resources are focused elsewhere, meaning checking the clock takes a back seat.
Emotional flattening is another factor. Experiencing big emotions — fear, anxiety, and excitement, for example — leaves a lasting impact. Feelings of burnout, stress, and monotony compress time because they form thin, interchangeable memories.
The fifth factor is dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in motivation, reward and the brain’s processing of time. Dopamine levels can change as we age, and ReachLink suggests that this may contribute to our perception that time is moving more quickly.
Keeping all of this in mind, there are steps you can take to try to slow time down and create moments and memories that break up the routines established later in life.
Mechanical engineering professor and author of Time and Beauty: Why Time Flies And Beauty Never Dies, Adrian Bejan, previously told The Independent: “Slow it down a little more, force yourself to do new things to get away from the routine.
“Treat yourself to surprises. Do unusual things,” continued Bejan, who authored the Cambridge University Press study.
“Have you heard a good joke? Tell me! Do you have a new idea? Do something. Make something. Say something.”
