The older you get, the faster time seems to pass. Can we fix that?

Answer

That is a very interesting problem that has already been extensively researched. If you have a lot to do, you do indeed have the impression that time is moving too fast, but then again, when you think back to everything you’ve done and the moments before you performed those busy tasks, it seems just that long. past. It shows that time is a relative concept for humans. Our brain measures time in function of the amount of information processed. The more information we process in an hour, the longer that hour took us. You experience the same when you walk from one place to another. The distance (and the time) seems longer exactly when there is much to experience or see along the way. This seems to contradict the feeling you have afterwards, namely that time has flown by.

An additional factor is age. The older we get, the slower our information processing goes. We can’t avoid that. This also makes time seem to move faster compared to when we were younger.

I’m afraid there isn’t much that can be done about it. The only way to make the time seem slow to you is to process as little information as possible, so do nothing. But I don’t think this is a good alternative.

Finally, I would like to give you an example that will make you think differently about the perception of time. Suppose you are going to do something really adventurous for a short vacation. I’m just saying, a multi-day mountain tour or something. When you come back home and you think back to what happened just before your trip, it seems much longer ago than if you had just sat at home those days. In other words, even though you may have felt that time passed quickly, afterwards you feel that you have lengthened the time during that period.

Kind regards,

Eric Soetens