Our brains don’t tend to log routine activities. Most of your prevalent oldest memories will either be strong emotions, times you were really happy, really excited, really sad etc. Typically these emotions are strongest when we’re experiencing something new.
As you get older, you experience less new things. So your memories become less prominent and everything becomes more routine.
As human’s, we typically track our perception of time passing through memories. When you’re young, you have lots of new experiences, so there’s lots of prominent markers in your memory for you to track time in. As an adult, we have less of these, so less markers means a less consistent perception of time.
For example, (typically) as a kid, in a week you’d spend 5 days at school then 2 days off. In those 5 days at school, you’d be chatting with friends, playing games in the break, learning new things, then maybe hanging out with friends after school. On the weekends, maybe you went out with friends, did something with family or whatever.
As an adult, (typically) you spend 5 days working, then 2 days off. In those 5 days working, you’re just working, not doing anything really exciting, just the same stuff you do everyday. After work, most people probably do an activity once or twice a week, but mostly just spend it resting or relaxing. At weekends, you may do an activity, or you’ll do chores, like cleaning the house, doing shopping.
So as a kid, you’re doing lots of fun things. As an adult, you do lots of boring things the brain doesn’t really register. It’s why it can feel like a week or month has passed really fast, because your brain hasn’t really registered it happening, it’s just been ticking along doing the routine.
Basically, if you want time to slow down, have more fun and more new experiences!
I remember reading it’s about point of reference in proportion to your age.
When you’re young, a year seems like a lifetime because it’s quite literally your whole life. Imagine, if you’re 1 years old going into your 2nd year, a year will feel super long because your last year was literally your whole lifetime.
As we age we get more time reference. At 20, you’ve basically already lived 20 lifetimes when compared to when you were 1, 2, 3 etc. You also get busier. Have new responsibilities. Meet new people. You develop relationships. You get new stresses and frustrations. New experiences. Suddenly, there’s not enough hours in the day to do everything you love and you need to plan ahead. You get less freedom. You need to cook your own food, work. This also plays a factor – a lot of our time is spent basically looking after ourselves. When we were younger, someone did it for us which left us more time to do what we wanted.
I believe all of this combined contributed to how we feel the time. From what I gathered, it just boils down to a single idea that we “get used to passage of time”.
people perceive everything through the lens of their existing experience.
when you’re 5 years old, another 5 years is literally half your life. (even more if we’re counting conscious part)
when you’re 75, 5 years are less than 7% of total years you’ve spent on Earth.
It’s already been posited, but I think it’s about our perception relative to our lived experience.
When I was ten years old, a tenth of my life experience was a single year, so a single school year felt like an eternity.
I’m now in my early sixties and having logged enough years, time flies by. I feel as though we crank through years like they’re nothing.
Things that occurred ten, even twenty years ago seem like they happened within the last five years.
A result of this phenomenon likely manifests in your experience: How many of you have had adult relatives like aunts and uncles tell you that it seemed like only yesterday that you were a baby or child? It’s not merely a trite aphorism. Seeing you as a grown ass adult is a bit of a shock.
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For all of the same reasons given every other time someone copy/pastes this question to try and farm karma for their new spam account.
Our brains don’t tend to log routine activities. Most of your prevalent oldest memories will either be strong emotions, times you were really happy, really excited, really sad etc. Typically these emotions are strongest when we’re experiencing something new.
As you get older, you experience less new things. So your memories become less prominent and everything becomes more routine.
As human’s, we typically track our perception of time passing through memories. When you’re young, you have lots of new experiences, so there’s lots of prominent markers in your memory for you to track time in. As an adult, we have less of these, so less markers means a less consistent perception of time.
For example, (typically) as a kid, in a week you’d spend 5 days at school then 2 days off. In those 5 days at school, you’d be chatting with friends, playing games in the break, learning new things, then maybe hanging out with friends after school. On the weekends, maybe you went out with friends, did something with family or whatever.
As an adult, (typically) you spend 5 days working, then 2 days off. In those 5 days working, you’re just working, not doing anything really exciting, just the same stuff you do everyday. After work, most people probably do an activity once or twice a week, but mostly just spend it resting or relaxing. At weekends, you may do an activity, or you’ll do chores, like cleaning the house, doing shopping.
So as a kid, you’re doing lots of fun things. As an adult, you do lots of boring things the brain doesn’t really register. It’s why it can feel like a week or month has passed really fast, because your brain hasn’t really registered it happening, it’s just been ticking along doing the routine.
Basically, if you want time to slow down, have more fun and more new experiences!
I remember reading it’s about point of reference in proportion to your age.
When you’re young, a year seems like a lifetime because it’s quite literally your whole life. Imagine, if you’re 1 years old going into your 2nd year, a year will feel super long because your last year was literally your whole lifetime.
As we age we get more time reference. At 20, you’ve basically already lived 20 lifetimes when compared to when you were 1, 2, 3 etc. You also get busier. Have new responsibilities. Meet new people. You develop relationships. You get new stresses and frustrations. New experiences. Suddenly, there’s not enough hours in the day to do everything you love and you need to plan ahead. You get less freedom. You need to cook your own food, work. This also plays a factor – a lot of our time is spent basically looking after ourselves. When we were younger, someone did it for us which left us more time to do what we wanted.
I believe all of this combined contributed to how we feel the time. From what I gathered, it just boils down to a single idea that we “get used to passage of time”.
people perceive everything through the lens of their existing experience.
when you’re 5 years old, another 5 years is literally half your life. (even more if we’re counting conscious part)
when you’re 75, 5 years are less than 7% of total years you’ve spent on Earth.
Im 30 years old. My son is 3. To me, 1 year is 1/30th of my life. To my son, it’s 1/3rd. That’s why a year is pretty trivial to me compared to my son
It’s already been posited, but I think it’s about our perception relative to our lived experience.
When I was ten years old, a tenth of my life experience was a single year, so a single school year felt like an eternity.
I’m now in my early sixties and having logged enough years, time flies by. I feel as though we crank through years like they’re nothing.
Things that occurred ten, even twenty years ago seem like they happened within the last five years.
A result of this phenomenon likely manifests in your experience: How many of you have had adult relatives like aunts and uncles tell you that it seemed like only yesterday that you were a baby or child? It’s not merely a trite aphorism. Seeing you as a grown ass adult is a bit of a shock.