I have always thought about this before, but didn't really put it into words and attempt to explain it to someone until yesterday...

Well, obviously time, or the perception of it is in the eye of the beholder, or observer... Sure you can measure time by the movement of objects and such, but what about people and their individual perception of time...

For instance, you have a 20 year old and a 40 year old.. The 20 year old, one year would of been 1/20th of his life, and 1/40th for the 40 year old.

So with each passing year, the percentage and perception of what a year has been, changes as you get older... The older you get, each year has subsequently become a smaller portion of your entire life, and thus seems as if it has gone by quicker...

I'm been reading lots of infomation on Quantum Physics, and how it basically it is saying that everything is just based on the "observer" and each observer is in someway creating their own reality... I am thinking that this general idea might have something to do with this as well...

I know this is not some ground-breaking thought-provoking idea, but I just thought I'd share... I am sure I will get some "like duh obviously" responses..

An afterthought though... Is time broken down into two different categories, you know before I go wiki it?? Maybe scientifically measurable time and the perception of time... Where the perception of time is in no way concrete and able to be precisedly measured except to the individual observer...

An infinite number of scenarios, but here is one. You have two people shopping at the mall, one hates shopping and the other adores it, obviously time or their perception of it, will be much different between the two individuals... If they were to try estimate how long they were there shopping without looking at a watch, the movement of the sun, etc, will more than likely be different after the fact...

There is that, and then something how time can be scientifically measured, like how long it takes for an elliptical orbit of a planet around a cellestial body...

Thanks, Ivan

I have thought about this phenomenon off and on my whole life pretty much.

One thing that's useful to consider is how perception of times varies in other situations, both during and after the experience.

For example when you are bored time seems to pass very slowly.

When you are on vacation time also seems to pass slowly in retrospect... that is after a week in Hawaii or whatever it might feel like you have been there a month.

When you multitable a ton of poker time seems to have passed slowly after the fact.

When you are in a state of shock time seems to pass very slowly.


Anyway my G.U.T. is that the more new and stimulating an experience, the slower time seems to pass. When you're a child everything is new and interesting. When you're an adult very few experiences are particularly memorable.

Likewise the more experience-rich a stretch of time, the longer it will seem in retrospect.


It also could be something as simple as slowing mental metabolism.

Maybe "thinking speed" is a factor in how quickly time is passing "now", while remembering any outside stimuli is like a timestamp for how long a time period felt?

On psychedelics, my mind can race at the speed of light.. I go out for a cigarette, light it, zone out in my thoughts for what seems like 10 minutes - and then realize I only had two puffs.

And the opposite side of the spectrum would be full anesthesia - they told me to count down from ten. Ten, nine, eight, seven, <some hours passed>, si.. wait, wtf, is it over? It really felt instantaneous.

Other than that, what Micturion said.

This is my experience. My late 20s have been "slower" than my early 20s and late teens, and I've just been doing much more during my late 20s. When I'm doing the same thing every day, time seems to drag.

Sometimes perception of when events happen is distorted, too. There are things I did 4 years ago that seem like they happened a short time ago. But there are things I did a year ago that seem like they happened a long time ago. Maybe there's some kind of bias involved. If something that happened 20 years ago feels like "just yesterday," that could trigger questions of "where has the time gone?"

That's not quite what quantum physics says, and the psychology involved here has nothing to do with quantum physics.

Yes, there are numerous studies that show how people's perceptions of time can change based on the situation (some nearly exactly as you describe with the shoppers). This perception, though, is just psychology, and not part of some grander physical phenomenon. Still, it can be interesting, so I would recommend some googling on the perception of the passage of time (I even recall having learned once, possibly incorrectly however, that the perception of time in dreams is often far off from reality).

I always wondered if time has a smallest unit it could be broken down into.
Kind of like quarks are the smallest building blocks of matter.
Is there a smallest building block of time?
Probably not but time sure is an interesting subject.

I think it's because the older you get the more memories you gain. More memories means more thoughts and more thoughts causes time to fly by more quickly. On the opposite spectrum take a toddler as an example, they do not have many memories or internal dialogue, they cannot tolerate a minute of boredom because time seems to be moving so slowly to them based on how they talk to themselves about the world.

Nobody challenging the original assumption? It doesn't match my experience.

I've always thought time went faster because the number of responsibilities I have keeps increasing which leaves me with less time to other things. I've only been thinking about this for the past 6 years or so (I'm 21) so if any older poster disagree I won't be surprised.

The human brain streamlines certain experiences that we repetitively have in our lives. For example, if you drive to work the same way every day, it is common that you will arrive at work and barely remember the actual driving. I think that as we get older, more and more experiences just start to look like experiences we've had before, and our brain sort of tunes out during them and all of a sudden hours, or weeks or months have passed without us fully registering it.

When one is a kid, every experience seems new, no matter how common or mundane. Our brains are constantly in the moment and fully experiencing time. The same hyperaware, in the moment explanation accounts for the drawn-out sensation of time experienced during intense multitabling of poker.

I figured this would be because your neuron speed drops as you age. Objectively time would slow down for this reason. By the same token that the world would seem to freeze if your neurons were greatly sped.

Addressing the OP's point its true that we intuitive experience things logarithimically.

This.

Think of our minds as processing upon a unit... each unit is one 'present'... the length of these units gets smaller or longer asif the lens of our observation tunes it. When having fun everything gets smaller, time passes quicker...

A bit of evidence here is by measuring people reaction speeds. If two people were to watch a ball falling the ball would fall slower within the reality of the faster reacted person.

If anyone has had cocaine before you can compare yourself under the influence of that to after,,, Its bloody wierd this alignment we have with the universe and how it changes.

Very interesting,,, too interesting as it's unexplainable and so a wasteful pursuit. Just accept and try and slow it down, observe... observation IS time, if we arent observing time passes much faster. Its like when you look at the clock waiting for impatiently for something, it goes slower and increases the alignment of energy towards -.

+1

makes me want to quit doing mundane things or find a way to make them exciting

I always figured that I was just asleep while I was driving. Pretty freaky actually.

I'm in my early 30's and really time doesn't seem to move any more quickly than when i was younger. I find myself more amazed at how much time has passed by things like hearing music that I listened to when I was 15 or 16 on a "classic rock" station. The same station that I used to hear old Elton John or Journey records on when I was a teenager is now playing stuff off of Pearl Jam's first album.... More of a "holy krap, I'm on my way to being old" sort of amazement. Not really a perception that the time has gone by more quickly.

This could be true, but as you age you can still easily estimate how long a minute is. It doesn't seem like the world is speeding up at all. In other words, it isn't the minutes and seconds that seem to speed up, it is the years seem to have somehow gone by too fast.

Things that effect perception of time:

1. Whether you are enjoying yourself. Enjoyment and novelty speeds up the perception of time, negative emotions slow it down. Think of a nice hour long drive versus an hour long commute in stop and go traffic. Interestingly, this works in reverse. Tell someone a non-enjoyable task took more time than it actually did, and they will think it was more enjoyable.

2. Consolidation of memories makes the past seem like it went by quickly. I had a job where every day was, for the most part, the same. I was surprised when my first year anniversary came. If I drew a timeline for that year, it would have the first week of learning the job, doing the job for the next 51 weeks as one data point, and my anniversary day. At my current job, I have never had two days that are alike. If I drew a timeline for this job, I would have tons of distinct data points. So, it seems like I have been there longer than I have when I look back.

It gets very interesting (at least to me) when you combine 1. and 2.

Keeping with the jobs, in the first (boring) job, each hour dragged on and on, but the year seems to have somehow flew by. In my current job, each hour flies by, but, looking back, I can't believe I have only been there for 8 months.

Probably also important to consider some physiology.

Frontal lobes don't fully form until about 21 and for some into mid-twenties. Thus the older we get the more we start looking forward, the more we try to plan and predict our lives, focusing on what's to come will surely "speed things up".

In our teens, we're more in the "now", thinking less about responsibility, consequences, ie the future, and more about what's happening in the present. Days are more likely lived as ends in themselves and thus will surely possibly seem longer.

Of course, tasks that make you focus on the now, ie, grinding a ton of tables clicking away into obilivion as you think about what you're going to eat for dinner after the boredom ends, well, that's probably going to "lengthen" the time a bit.

Obviously not a wholistic explanation or whatever, but probably accounts for a fair chunk of the phenomenon.

Should probably also mention, when our frontal lobes start to atrophy, for some in their 50s, 60s, hopefully not until their 80s, things start to slow down a bit, there's less thought about later and a stronger return to now, so don't worry, it gets better :P

Sometimes when I compare the passage of time since two events, it feels like more time has passed since the most recent event than the "oldest" event. I think it has to do with memory. For example, I recall very vividly when my little sister was born 16 years ago. I was only 7 years old and this was massive. I remember some very specific details, even down to how I felt and what I was thinking. It really feels very recent.

The other day, however, I bumped into someone who I used to go to high school with. This person had completely disappeared from my memory and when I saw him again, it almost felt like it wasn't even this same lifetime that I last saw him.

I don't know how much that has to do with OP, but it's something that I've thought about before. Another thing I have thought about before is "phases" of a life. I think it's pretty common for a person to kinda drift for a period between, say 30-50, where they have settled on a career, are paying a mortgage and just basically grinding it out. Then you get older, and more people seem to die, you go to Elsie's funeral but it doesn't seem 2 minutes since you were at Ernie's, and you surmise that it won't be long before it's your turn.