When you're a kid, time seems to move so slowly,
but as an adult it really seems to fly.
We all heard it from our parents growing up and
thought it sounded preposterous at the time: "What
happened to last year? It flew by!" they would yell to each other at New Year's Eve parties.
That's because when you're a kid, time
seemed to move incredibly slowly. My birthday is
only a month from Christmas but I remember when
I was 7 that those four weeks felt like eons — now
it's all I can do to even bother celebrating my
birthday, since it feels like I still have tinsel in my
hair.
While we can't put our finger on an exact year when
"time speeds up" it happens to most of us — and for
real reasons. The first, and largest, is due to what
psychologists call the Habituation Hypothesis. For
very good reason, our brains want to conserve
energy (compared to other animals, human brains
use a lot of calories to run). So, once we have
gotten used to something — a route to work, doing
the dishes or getting dressed in the morning, for
example — we start to do it on autopilot, and cease
noticing many of the small things that make one day
different from another. This makes time seem to
pass much more quickly, since fewer unique
moments are being recorded by your brain.
When you are a small child, everything is new, and
most days are a learning experience, so your brain
is rarely on "auto" and you notice much more,
leading to time seeming much slower. The more
attention that is paid to each moment, the slower
time seems to pass (which makes sense, if you
think about it).
There are physical reasons time perception
changes too: Dopamine levels drop as we age,
which affects our sense of time. And heart rate even
has an impact. According to a 2013 research paper
in the journal Attention, Perception, and
Psychophysics, "...variations in prospective timing
are caused by two factors: the pulse rate of an
internal pacemaker and the amount of attention
directed to the passage of time."
While you can't change much about the biological
aspects of aging, you can force yourself out of your
typical routine, and slow down time when you want
to, using a few techniques.
•Elevate Your Daily Experiences:
Whatever it is that
brings you into the moment (I favor time in nature
and experiencing art), do more of those things.
Playing with your kids without any distractions,
cooking a meal from scratch or listening to a piece
of music (not while reading, not while cleaning, just
listening) are other ideas that will ground you in the
now, create new memories and slow down time.
•Do New Stuff:
Remember those routines I wrote
about above? Shake them up. Get up early one
morning and take yourself to breakfast; go to a
movie after work; take a long lunch and go window-
shopping downtown; don't turn the TV on before bed
and read or write instead. Changing up what you
usually do will cause you to notice new things and
see the world with a new perspective that's
refreshing.
•Quit Multitasking:
Not focusing on the task at hand
is the easiest way to lose time. If you are throwing
together dinner while helping your kids with
homework, while chatting to your friend, you
probably won't remember doing any of those things.
Try doing one thing at a time — this might require
practice if you are used to doing many things at
once — and see how you remember the day later.
Want to keep time from rushing by? It's at least
partially up to you, and how you live your life.
www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/blogs/science-shows-that-time-really-does-fly-as-you-age