Have you noticed that time seems to speed up as you get older?
It's not just in your head - it's a real psychological phenomenon. And if we understand why it happens, we can actually hack it to get more out of life.
As we grow older, each year becomes a smaller proportion of our lives up to that point. And that proportion is related to our subjective (psychological) sense of time.
Let me explain: For a 5-year-old, a year is one fifth (20%) of life so far. For a 50-year-old, it's one fiftieth (only 2%) - a smaller proportion. Each moment as we get older becomes an ever smaller proportion of our life lived up to that point.
The older we get, that reducing proportion makes moments feel shorter and thus makes time feel like it's rushing past. Paul Janet, a French philosopher in 1897, called this "log time."
But the bigger reason (and that explains the above) lies in the brain.
The brain roughly gauges the passage of time by the number of new memories we form. And this is related to the fact that new memories and experiences are encoded in rich, complex detail in the brain.
Familiar routines, on the other hand, are encoded in much less detail - more like faint traces.
Where there's less complex detail in the encoding of experiences - like with these familiar routines - there's less sense of time. As a result, we get the sense of time skipping in-between our key moments and experiences.
It's why we sometimes reach the office and can barely remember the journey - because we've made that same journey hundreds of times - and why when days blend together in routine, whole weeks can disappear in a blur.
But when everything's new - like when we're kids - time feels expansive.
That's something different: when you're absorbed, you have less awareness of the passage of time - so you lose track of time.
When you're bored, time gets your full attention - you notice every second crawling past.
As William James put it in 1890: "Our feeling of time harmonizes with different mental moods."
Three strategies work at any age:
Do new things. Learn something new, like a hobby, class, or sport. Or study something new, like a subject or language.
Mix-up your routine. Maybe a different route to work, a different meal, or even change the sequence of your routine.
Fully immerse yourself. Pay attention to the sights, sounds, smells, and textures around you. The more sensory detail you take in, the more your brain encodes - and the longer that time will feel in hindsight.
Try it this week:
♦ Learn a new skill or activity (yoga, dance, sport, language).
♦ Shake up your routine in small ways.
♦ Practice mindfulness in everyday moments.
The more new memories and sensory detail you feed your brain, the more time you'll feel you've truly lived.
Watch my YouTube video where I unpack the science of time perception and how to make life feel longer.
If you're the kind of person who likes to peek under the hood, here are a few of the studies and ideas that inspired this week's email.
The "log time" idea - Philosopher Paul Janet suggested in 1897 that years feel shorter as we age. Modern psychology still studies it today. Read here